Age of Deception
by Takeda Lee
Summary: The sun has set for the Wizarding World, and the moon has risen on the horizon to replace it. Soon the moon will set at the dawning of a new day. Things appear much different under the stars, and all falsehoods are stripped away by the light of the moon
1. Blood

Rain in England was nothing special to the inhabitants of the island nation, used to the sky opening up and showering them all at a moment's notice. That was why it was rare to see a very public reaction to this occurrence outside of mild swearing and overly practiced motions of moving away from the rain to somewhere warm and dry to wait it out. It was actions bred by habit.

Death had become like rain to some people. There are only so many times you can see it and react with true emotion before it becomes a complacent habit of mock reaction and moving on with your life. Only so many times you can cry and bawl and let the sorrow knock at the door of your heart, only to let it in and have it wreak havoc upon the insides. You live and you learn.

Soon it takes you less time to get it out of your heart, causing so much pain, and eventually, you don't even let it in anymore. Soon, there is no sorrow, no pain, nothing but emptiness. You hear of death, you go through the motions, and then you wait for it to pass you over to go about your day.

It rained at the start of summer. And many people died that night. In fact, it rained so hard, that their blood was washed from the streets, and their bodies dragged off into the night. By the dawning of the next morning, sunlight climbing into the sky revealing what looked to be clear skies, there was no evidence of anything but a late night rain that left the air crisp and the smell of precipitation drifting on the breeze.

---

Blood.

So much of life is based on something as simple yet as important as blood. Simple red substance comprised of everything your body needs to function as it should. Human blood, barring some person-specific things, doesn't vary very much in essence. When one is cut, they bleed this red form of liquid life. But in some places, blood is held to such high regard that it is more than just something giving life. It is life.

Blood.

It was running down the sink in a thick stream, almost pulsating as it spiraled the sink unnaturally before slipping into the drain, occasionally bubbling back up as if in defiance of its own wasting. White porcelain sinks were rarely, if ever, done in kitchens, it was a pointless practice considering the damage done to the kitchen sink and the upkeep needed to keep it pristine and white. However, this current household had made the expenditure solely based on the fact that they had no intention of operating the sink. For 1 more month, it was someone else's job. Then after that, it would be someone else's house.

The knife's clatter had created a chip into the sink's veneer, and the blood would pool in the crack as it washed over the razor edge of the blade laying there on its way to the drain. The silver blade was soon coated in a red sheen that caused the reflection of the person that had dropped it to be given an ominous crimson glaze.

One would think that, after cutting yourself so deeply, the reaction would be immediate, barring the severing of any nerves or the person going into shock. But there was no shock on the bland face reflected in the tainted blade, no emotion at all. No movement was present, there was no sign of continued life other than the occasional blinking, the rhythmic, almost mantra-like rise and fall of slow breathing, and the continued blood flow into the sink.

The sound of feet scuffling quickly grew louder, but the standing form did not move, staying rooted, watching the blood drain out as the reflection, despite its red hewn, showed his face growing more and more pale, to the point of almost seeming to glow in his paleness. The doors behind him flew open with a slam against the far wall, and the footsteps sounded to what would put the person right behind him, and stopped.

He didn't move. He had no intention of doing so, nor any reason to do such a thing, even as his shoulders were grabbed and he was spun around to have his hand wrapped in a pale bath towel that steadily grew darker and deeper in color as the second hand ticked along. She looked to the eyes of the still mostly motionless form before her, and saw nothing but emptiness. Her lips moved, but he didn't hear her. He saw her mouth working, but heard no voice from her lips. He wasn't listening if he did hear, his mind was elsewhere. Focused on the pain, squeezing every drop of hurt from the pain he was feeling as he could.

Suddenly her voice slipped through into his mind as he heard the end of the sentence "…must you do this to yourself? Do you like pain?" her voice was frantic, a voice she reserved for mishaps concerning only one other person, a person that wasn't him. His eyes drifted up to hers, and he seemed to almost drift off into the back of his mind while staring into her eyes, before he looked away from her as if lost in thought and not alive in his own mind at the same time.

"Masochistic? Not I. But this is the pain they felt as they were taken. This is the pain, and the calm you get, before death. I will never understand what they did until I am there…it's all starting to make sense now. That rumored moment of complete clarity before the darkness comes. I see it now. It all makes sense…" And with those words, his miraculous eyes seemed to almost brighten, becoming so vivid they seemed to emit an awkward glow onto his nearly paper-white face. And then his eyes drifted closed, and his legs gave from under him a moment later.

The once pale, now blood soaked and deep crimson towel was strewn to the side, slapping the wall with a sickening splat sound, before sliding down, leaving a blood trail down to the wall, as a shrill scream echoed around the pale kitchen, bouncing off of the newly purchased appliances and out of the freshly fitted windows. The scream slipped out across the overly manicured lawn, and off every light post along the street, bouncing into every ear within distance. It was a cry of pain, of hurt, of loss. It was a scream of desperation and helplessness. Two things Petunia Dursley wasn't known for.

---

The moon has long been a speculation of human interest. Every night it seems to appear from nowhere, fading into life for but a few hours, before almost seeming to drift out of existence as the sun rises over the horizon. The moon seems to demonstrate the cycle of life every month, waxing from such a small sliver to a full, bright beacon in the sky, and then reversing the cycle. Birth to death within a month, and then starting all over again.

Mankind has long been enchanted with the moon and its origin. So much so that it has become a fixture in mythology for millennia. On this particular night, the moon was at its fullest. High in the sky, draped in a scant veil of gray clouds the color of smoke, as the stars beside it blinked out a story only able to be told to those who needed to see, and knew how to look.

One such person lay, oddly, atop the roof of a house, staring up at the sky, a smile dusted across her features as she seemed to almost be watching some kind of play before her eyes, serenity in her clear as water blue eyes. She loved the night, and she loved the moon.

Her mother used to sing her a song about the moon, about the stars and the night sky. About love and happiness. But that was before the pain and the suffering. To her, her mother was a beautifully clear night sky. But the morning sun had arisen and caused her to fade away long before her time.

Her mother loved the moon. Her mother had named her Luna. Told her to always shine, be the light in the darkness for other people. Help them see what they otherwise couldn't. Those were the last words she spoke to Luna before her eyes closed, and the last sliver of life waned. But Luna didn't cry. Because she believed her mother would start anew elsewhere, at a different place…on a new night.

Luna loved the night sky after it had rained. The coolness of the air seemed to caress her skin like a lover's cool hand, and she loved it on the summer nights when the brisk air was all she had.

Her father had taken to acting very oddly. He would be up into the early hours of the morning working in the editorial laboratory he had created in the attic of the house, and would refuse to come down. Luna very much doubted he would eat, but every attempt she made to deliver sustenance, she found herself tasting the door in her face as he left her on the other side of it without a word.

He wasn't right. She could see that. But she didn't know what to do, but lay on the roof, reading the story the sky told her, trying to figure out what she was meant to do. It had not been a good day, and it was all she could do to watch the skies, and keep the smile on her face. Something was wrong, and the stars could tell. But they continued to tell her a sweet story, trying to hide it. But her mother had taught her reading the skies incredibly well. And the moon didn't lie. It never lied to her. And the faint red sheen that was glinting across it even in the night sky wasn't a good omen.

---

Ginevra Weasley gazed out of her window up at the night sky, a sigh escaping her lips at an almost clockwork-like manner. She wasn't happy, and hadn't been for some time. She was sure that Harry would owl her when the summer began and his muggle relations went back to treating him without love. She was sure he would send her word, plans for a rekindling of their just recently dimmed love once he saw how alone he was.

But nothing had come.

She hated being wrong, it unnerved her to a great degree because there was no middle ground to being wrong. You can't be half wrong. It's all or nothing, and that made Ginny shake at the window like the leaves caught in the summer breeze outside. She sighed to herself as the wind caught her thoughts and turned them around several times before delivering them back to her anew.

In a year, Ginny had become more like Hermione than she liked to allow herself to believe. She had looked up to the older girl since the first time they had met and spoken to each other. There was something about the assuredness, the confidence the girl's knowledge seemed to bring her that appealed to Ginny's mind. Growing up as the only girl in such a large family had been hard on the young redhead's psyche, living in a shell, afraid to express herself.

But Hermione had been a wake up call to Ginny. And in short work, the girl had begun to mold herself after the bushy-haired girl. The revelation of the closeness Harry and Hermione shared above all seemed to drag this change into another year. The past year had been all of Ginny's dreams come true. Her subtle transformation into the older girl, not to mention a select potion she had acquired and slipped into a goblet of pumpkin juice, had seemed to yield some kind of emotion to draw Harry toward her. And that had been all Ginny felt she needed, to have him be close to her, for him to realize he cared about her.

Ginny cringed at the word cared. It was past tense. And one thing about being like Hermione was the girl's loathing for failure. Failure was a sign of weakness, a sign of not having been enough to succeed. Not being good enough…

Toying with the shimmering locket around her neck, Ginny gazed back out of her window as she ran her finger along the stylized "S" engraved atop the jewelry, willing her mind to believe that an owl was coming. It simply had to. She didn't fail. She couldn't have.

---

The darkness of the night was like a coating of paint over the forest, and was unbiased in its covering. The full moon, in all its brightness, couldn't pierce the woolen thickness of the darkness in the forest. There was a rustling of sound as bushes were stepped through. Silence or discretion weren't necessary when it was as dark as it was, darker than it should have been. But it wasn't as if the person who had made the sound had any reason to sneak anywhere as it was. The forest was empty as far as he knew. It had been arranged that the general vicinity was to be as clear as possible to make his approach simple.

His eyes darted back and forth despite his supposed sureness of his solitude, wand dangling in between his finger in a motion meant to look absentminded but was in fact much more, its use just a moment away and always at hand. His hair hung in his eyes as he approached the compound, arriving at the portkeyed door, he slipped his wand back, knowing he was home free.

However, as he reached up to pound the knocker, he was slammed up into the door. Before he could even catch his bearing and go for his wand, he was pressed back against the door with shining yellow eyes pushing him deeper into it than the strong arms against his throat.

"Getting careless in your old age? Or perhaps just going soft with your days as Dumbledore's _boy_. Maybe that condition can be remedied now that he was felled to your own hands." The voice paused for a second, before speaking again. "Let us hope not Severus. Because your ineptitude has made others have to pick up the slack. And I do so very much enjoy cleaning up after your idiocy. And I would enjoy even more cleaning up after Riddle's. And finally ending your meager existence at my own hands…or teeth." And with that, and a mocking snapping of his mouth, the man stepped back.

"Greyback, stay away from me, lest I speak of your treachery. 'Riddle' you say, how dare you show such lack of respect for our Lord!" Severus was shaking on the inside. Something wasn't right in Fenrir's eyes, and the actual eloquence in wording that the werewolf had shown was completely out of character as far as was known about the personality of the man. If he could be called a man.

"You do not frighten me, Severus. Nor does this 'Lord' of yours. Mind games are for children. Simple children, and let him know I said so. I dare say he shan't hear the words uttered from my lips, as, should he come close enough to heard anything from my mouth, no words will be said. Nothing will spill forth from my mouth but his blood onto the floor." Severus stared. The man before him was not the Fenrir Greyback that had been present at the siege on Hogwarts. This was not the same Fenrir Greyback that was spoken about in horrible stories older children told their younger siblings to give them nightmares and increase the fear of the dark. No, this was a whole different beast.

"You may go Severus. And deliver my message, but be prepared for the pain upon delivering it. I do believe he will be quite angry at losing the werewolves to his foolish, over-prideful pursuits at world domination." Fenrir stepped back a moment and glanced away as if he had heard something. He looked back to Severus with something unreadable in his eyes. "But do not think to not tell him what I have told you. I daresay he would be even less congenial about finding out you were withholding even more information than he knows of." And with that, the yellow eyes drilled into the very skull of Severus Snape, and then they, along with the person that had been before him, were gone.

Reaching up and shakily grasping the door's knocker, he felt the tug of a portkey, and found himself in the foyer of the "Slytherin Compound" as it had been dubbed. His eyes darted around, before he began the trek to the main throne room. Much was to be said, and he began to steel himself for the pain that was to drag across his body in the coming hours.

---

The sound of death littered the night, paraded up and down the streets like a circus procession, so loud in its presence that human ears could not even hear its arrival until it was far too late.

The wolves showed their true allegiance that night, and their lack of alignment to any side but their own. Dark Pureblood, Half-Blood, Muggleborn and Muggle alike all died that night, and proved that blood made no difference in the end. It all painted the earth the same crimson color, and in the end, one person's blood meant no more than any other person's. It was all spilt the same to the jagged teeth that ripped throats open, that gnarled bodies and shattered bones. That lacked discrimination between man, woman or child upon the rampage.

And for all the hatred of the beasts known as werewolves, there was one thing to be said about them. Their hatred, their anger, their thirst for blood was indiscriminate. Something that those that considered themselves superior to the clawed hybrids of man and beast had yet to learn. And would do well to discover as soon as possible. War was coming, and one dead body is not worth more than another, regardless of blood.

Because it all spilt the same, and was all washed away by the same morning rain.

---


	2. Knowledge

Control. There are those that have it, and those that don't. It is a fleeting thought in the minds of some, and a solid rock which others live by. It can be a calm, passionate lover to those that take it willingly. Or it can be a domineering master to those that have it forced upon them.

Sometimes, to gain power over one's life, one must lose all control.

---

Losing blood has a medically calming effect to the body, and in truth the very idea is contradictive to the thought that the body strives to live. The calm that can wash over one as that which sustains life flees a steadily sinking ship almost seems to prove that the human body lives to die. This is further proven by the fact that, the moment something is born, it begins to die, the steady drop of the sands in the proverbial hourglass of time could almost be heard if listened closely enough.

But sometimes death can not be allowed, no matter how much the body, and even the mind, tries to make it so. So dark eyes opened to the painfully white ceiling above them, and for a moment everything was bright. Too bright, as if the sun itself was just in the next room. The kind of bright that washed every trace of color away, and all that was left was the purity, the emptiness and the crowding of the light. It was like that for an eternity and for no time at all, before the color seemed to funnel back, but the emptiness remained.

His breath caught in his throat before he sat up abruptly, his eyes darting around him as his level of alertness seemed to spike. The room wasn't bright. In fact it was dark, darker than normal. And as his eyes rolled to the side, seeking out a possible identification of where he was, sound called out to him before sight could catch up. "Foolish boy. Even unworthy to be a Gryffindor…nothing but a weak-minded coward."

He knew that voice well, it had haunted the last dream he remembered having. It was the worst kind of dream surpassing even nightmares in the horror and fear they insight. These were the torments of memory, of realizing such horrors had occurred that not even his subconscious wanted anything to do with acknowledging their existence of its own volition.

"To be so vain as to not pay any attention to my merciful attempts at directing your Neanderthal-like mind in the delicate mental arts…It amazes me you somehow still live. Allowing the Dark Lord to break into your mind and control you like so, it would shock me how moronic a pursuit that was, leaving whatever shields you may have down. It would, were you not a Potter."

Harry turned to Severus Snape, his eyes narrowed and his body barely able to control the sudden influx of unbridled rage that shot through his veins, into his heart, and out again more powerful than it had been. But at the same time, the rage left a twinge of pain as it passed through his rapidly beating heart, one that made his breath catch.

He could hear his heart pounding in his ears as he balled his hands into fists so tightly his arms began to shake, but his eyes didn't leave the man before him. It seemed with every beat of his heart, the rage multiplied in intensity, until his vision began to cloud around the edges. But all that did was give him tunnel vision, focusing his entire sense of sight on the swarthy figure in front of him.

"Snivellus."

Snape moved with surprising speed, his wand forgotten to his side as he moved forward to physically strike the still recovering boy before him. And in doing so, Harry saw the one opening he ever thought he'd get. Green eyes darted to the wand which was to the surly man's right, before Harry leaned in to the oncoming slap. The pain that settled in at his cheek and reverberated through his facial muscles and down his spine secured its worth as Harry's fingers closed around the wand just before his head landed quite harshly on the coffee table that had been between the two men.

However, as Severus Snape was wallowing in his triumph of physically attacking the boy before him, Harry was debating which spell to use on the sallow figure darkening the otherwise pristine residence.

_Sectumsempra _or _Diffindo, _both had their pros and cons, but after milling it around in his mind for a while, Harry decided, why choose one, when you can do both? Sitting back and observing the man before him, Harry knew what had to be done. "_Diffindo! Sectumsempra!"_

Moody would have been proud. The severing charm had severed Snape's right arm from his body, and the _Sectumsempra _had followed immediately, cutting into the man's quadriceps and severing the muscles and nerves, leaving him unable to stand from the chair he had been seated in. Without medical attention, Severus Snape would die in the chair he had been seated so smugly in just moments before, in the front room of a muggle home that no one would bother to look for him in.

Harry couldn't resist the irony of it all, and a throaty, hacking laugh racked his body for but a moment. However, he was knocked from his reverie as Snape seemed to be trying to communicate with him, and what was more, Harry needed answers before the man before him would be so lucky as to get to walk the final path into death.

---

It was painful for the older man, Harry was sure, when the latter had used _Incendio _to cauterize the stump that had once been Snape's shoulder. And he was sure it hurt just as much, if not more, when he did it across the man's legs as well. However, something in Harry's mind was completely incapable of caring at the moment, as he stood woozily, teetering dangerously as he moved around, but still able to stand. Which was more than could be said about the figure in front of him.

"_Stupefy."_ Harry intoned. Snape had passed out from the pain, and the easiest way to get him awake would be to stun him and then _Renervate_ him to force him awake. "_Renervate."_

"Potter! How dare-"

"Shut up." Snape did just as he was told, as he observed his situation and realized it was the boy in front of him who had put him in such a predicament. Something in his mind told him he was in no position to order his release, or anything else for that matter. "Tell me everything you know. And do not lie, it will do neither of us any good, considering its eternally doubtful you will live to see the light of day tomorrow as it is. But lie to me, and its entirely possible you won't live to see the other side of the hour."

Snape simply stared, dumbfounded, before he opened his mouth and began to ramble.

---

"So yes, Potter. As far as we are all concerned, you are, in fact, the last Horcrux. Any doubts we may have had over that have been thoroughly dispelled at this moment."

"How so." Harry's mind was having a hard time wrapping around what he had been told, so his question was monotone and his face was an ashen, blank slate. His eyes were empty, sunken in, and staring off into the distance that was over Snape's shoulder. In short, he wasn't all there, and he was in just the frame of mind needed to not break when he heard what he was told next.

"Because of what you have just done, Potter. You have shown no remorse in maiming another human being, and will show little care in your little escapade to receive your answers, despite the fact that you have thusly ended my life at your own hands." Harry's eyes drifted to lock with the eyes of the man in front of him, his lax grip on the wand in his hand tightening and his knuckles whitening. "You are destined to become like him, Potter. Bellatrix told us about your foray into the Dark Arts in the Department of Mysteries, and that cracked the dam between the fragment of his soul, and that of your own."

"So in other words…"

"His soul began leaking into yours at the end of your fifth year, boy. And with the events of this last year, and moreover, the events of today, its entirely possible that that boundary between the two souls has fallen completely." Harry stared blankly at Snape, not out of a lack of understanding, but simply because he was completely flabbergasted by what he was hearing. Snape, however, took it as signs he needed to simplify it further, but bit back any insults has he was still the one at a clear disadvantage in the situation. "He is polluting your soul, Potter. His darkness is literally _pouring_ into your soul and you have no choice in fighting what you are predestined to be. You will go dark, Potter, and you _will_ become like him. You have proven that here.

"I'm sure you just couldn't take that it wasn't possible for you to become more famous, so you did the only thing you could do, and decided to become infamous. How the fates adore irony. And here I am, forever to go down in history as the first person to fall in your inevitable reign of terror. What luck have I these days…" All further words were cut off as Harry's mind seemed to disconnect his ability to hear, in order to send all available energy into processing what had just been played out before him.

Harry himself had no idea what came over him that caused him to severely injure the sallow man in front of him, or more so, what had been causing his actions the last day, and here it was, plain as day.

He was damned to become dark. To become just like Voldemort.

He almost laughed to himself, "_If only all those jealous gits who longed to be 'The-Boy-Who-Lived' knew the price I have to pay now for surviving, all those years back. Ha! They can have it."_ Harry looked back to Snape, who had stopped talking and was staring at him. "What?"

"You find out that your destiny is to become an evil to rival The Dark Lord's, and all you can say is 'What?' I'm glad I will be leaving this earth today, existing with someone like you holding power would not be an existence worth having."

Harry had lost all pretense of listening to Snape, as he realized his fate. He fully intended to destroy Voldemort, and if he hadn't had reason before, he had it now. But now, it was a race against the clock, he had to destroy all the other Horcruxes before his soul became so polluted he simply knocked off Voldemort and took his place. And that meant he simply didn't have time to be sitting around listening to Snape's blood loss induced ranting and raving.

"I am leaving." Were his simple words, before he stood and ascended the stairs to his room. He was back down within a few moments, his trunk levitating behind him. "I thank you for healing me when you arrived, even if it was just to gloat and then kill me afterwards."

"I didn't heal you."

"What?"

"What I just said, you insolent brat, I didn't heal you. When I arrived you were laying in a pool of blood, but you were healed, not a scab or scar to show any indication of an injury. The only thing I can think of that could have healed such injuries without any visible signs such as that would be a massive amount of Phoenix tears."

"Well then, I had intended to leave you with your wand as thanks for saving my life, but considering that that is not what you did, I will just take it with me. Interesting to note that the Ministry has not bombarded the place with underage magic letters, but I suppose you Death Eaters can't go around with your wands giving off magical signature readings to the Ministry of Magic, now can you.

"So I will just take it along, can't hurt to have a wand that's undetectable. So I bid you adieu, Snivellus, and I do so hope the next time I see you is on the front of the Daily Prophet at your execution." And with that, Harry Potter walked out of Number 4 Privet Drive. He would not return there again.

---

Luna Lovegood gazed off into the distance as she sat atop a crate in Diagon Alley, braiding and twisting multicolored strings she had found around the Alley into her hair. Some where stands of fabric from Madam Malkin's, some were lost or discarded tail-twigs from brooms. One was a dragon heartstring that was left to discard after the wand had been broken, the owner preferring to just go and get another wand instead of attempting to repair the old one. She even had hairs that she was sure came from the illusive Sudanese Macawcodile that were currently migrating north.

Despite how she appeared, Luna was not simply sitting around absentmindedly, as people seemed to believe she, "Looney" Luna Lovegood, did most of the time. No, she was actually waiting for something, that was for sure.

However, she had absolutely no idea what it was she was waiting for at all.

She knew she would know when she saw it, Luna had faith in the sureness of Fate enough to know that much was true. So until the time came, she was fully intending to remain where she was, her bright eyes darting around, observing everything.

Her hopes of being otherwise ignored and left to her own devices were dashed as a gaggle of red-haired people congregated just in the alley in front of her, huddled together as if in deep conversation. They broke apart as one and split into groups to move around, and it was just the blond girl's luck that the group of Ginevra, Ronald and Molly Weasley were headed her way.

Luna had never particularly cared for Molly Weasley. The contrast between the portly, homely woman that was the matron of the Weasley family, and the woman who had been Luna's mother was about as stark a difference as possible, and Luna wanted nothing to do with the mothering, and in many ways, smothering, ways of Molly.

"Hello Luna dear, stand on up and give me a hug, dear." Luna mused that the "request" from Molly sounded much more like a command than anything else.

"I'm afraid I can not, Mrs. Weasley, for you see, I have trapped a Twinkle-toed Twinkle Toad under this crate here, you see, and if I were to stand then it would escape. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?" The blonde smiled at her quick thinking. Everyone knew the Twinkle-Toed Twinkle Toad was in hibernation this time of year, and even if they weren't, it was impossible to trap them in anything but a net made of spider web and Veela hair.

"Um…alright dear. Ginny, Ron, why don't you two stay out here and keep young Luna company while I slip into the Apothecary and grab some supplies."

"That would be quite alright Mrs. Weasley. Twinkle-toed Twinkle Toads become easily roused by those who lack the ability to maintain emotional control, as they are partially empathic, you know. And you and I can both admit that Ginny and Ronald do have a bit of an issue maintaining full handle on their tempers. So I'll be fine sitting here on my own, if it's alright with you."

Molly eyed her oddly before making a motion to her children, who had turned to her upon Luna's monologue ending. She then walked into the Apothecary, her head held high, as Ginny walked over to Luna and physically bumped the blonde to the side on the crate to allow the former room to sit. Ron stood to the side looking quite uncomfortable, shifting from crossing his arms to putting his hands in his pockets and back every few seconds.

Luna, for her part, wanted nothing more than to bodily push Ginny off of the crate. She was used to people giving her the space she wanted when she asked for it, after years of living in Ravenclaw. Ginny had been there for Luna in the time in her life after her mother's death, and the redheaded girl's lack of willingness to leave the blonde alone when asked had been a blessing and a curse in one.

The curse had been the redheaded girl herself.

The blessing had been Luna being able to learn to literally forget Ginny existed. It was an ability that carried over into Hogwarts and many of the girl's tormentors. The cruel Ravenclaws still searched for an understanding as to why it was that Luna could seem entirely unbothered by the loss of her things, or the mistreatment of her body by others.

The fact of the matter was, Luna really did just ignore the existence of those she found to mean her ill will. If Marietta Edgecomb wandered by and smacked Luna's books from the latter's hands, Luna would just rationalize she had dropped them and continue on with picking them up. It took a great deal of willpower on her part not to turn around and confront those who harmed her so, but in the end she found that people like Marietta, and Ginny, the two more in the same vein than either would be willing to admit, lived for the confrontation.

Luna found she actually saw little of Ginny during the school year because of this fact. Luna saw no need to gossip about boys, classes, teachers, Quidditch or any of the other topics Ginny seemed so hung up on. And she wouldn't give Ginny an active conversation partner either. Luna would simply nod and agree without paying any attention, simply repeating what she heard, "Mmhmm, I'm sure Lockhart and Hermione are having unhealthy relations during tutoring, like you said Ginny." Or "No, of course Harry could never be attracted to anyone but you, nonetheless that troll Cho Chang, just like you said, Ginny."

Luna didn't even listen to anything the other girl said most of the time. The words went in her ears and out her mouth, repeating them for the other girl's benefit in hopes that, once the Weasley girl's ego was stroked enough, she would wander off and Luna could recommence with living her life.

Luna really didn't like Ginny Weasley all that much.

To be completely honest with herself for once, Luna had to admit, she didn't like Ginny Weasley at all.

---

Harry Potter was having a horrible day, if he was honest with himself enough to admit that. His trunk had been abandoned somewhere in Surrey, he hadn't the willpower to keep it. Knowing that he was racing against the clock to save not only himself, but his friends, and countless others he'd never met, he knew he wouldn't be able to keep the things he had held so dear. No matter how much he wanted to keep them, it would be impossible to carry them with him, and he couldn't be seen doing magic to keep it with him.

He had removed many of the things held inside, and shrunken them down to allow easy carrying, but he wouldn't be able to keep them that size forever, so he had emotionally separated himself from them on the walk out of the neighborhood and toward a more seedy side of town from which to hail the Knight Bus.

It was quite ironic that as he descended into the less "respectable" part of the area he had been forced to call home most of his life, his hope and view on the entire situation began to brighten. Harry realized several things as he walked. The first being, this was in his hands, and it wasn't about glory, fame, or even doing what was right. It was purely about doing what had to be done. Voldemort had to die, and through the prophetic ramblings of a woman deemed certifiably insane by all who laid eyes on her, there was only one person who could do that, and that was Harry.

The second thing he realized, on the heels of this first revelation was, the prophecy basically ensured Harry immortal until Voldemort and he had a run-in. This would, in theory, stretch to Voldemort as well, assuming the whole "at the hands of the other" thing was what it appeared to be, but this left Harry a lot of room in feeling better about his odds of going up against Voldemort and however many Death Eaters the man had under his service.

Lastly, Harry realized, if this wasn't true, and he wasn't, in fact, unable to be killed by anyone but Voldemort, it meant the prophecy was a lie. And that also meant that Voldemort was fully capable of dying at the hands of any given person, and Harry could almost say he was willing to have his death at the hands of something so simple as a speeding car, just to have the world, and the ones who knew about the prophecy realize, it wasn't infallible, and they could kill the monster that was Tom Riddle.

He cracked a smile as he boarded the bus, the hood on the over-large sweater he had drawn around himself leaving everything on his face but that smile cast in shadows. He paid the fare and asked to be taken to Diagon Alley, and sat down on one of the beds, placing his head in his hands.

"So what you're telling me is, someone killed the great Albus Dumbledore, and the Auror force has _yet_ to rein this bastard in?"

"Yeah…for the longest, everyone in my department seemed to think Potter was lying about it, and had killed the Headmaster himself, but finally we just had to believe him, considering it wouldn't look right to the public if the only one to see the great Albus Dumbledore his final moments, and the Boy-who-bloody-lived to boot, was deemed a crazed lunatic after being seen to be right about You-know-who being back and all."

Harry stood and moved away from the two, refusing to even look at their faces, lest he be pushed into some form of action he would regret. His nerves were frayed and his mind seemed to be heading toward acceptance of his fate. Which meant the willpower to fight what dark thoughts he would normally repress, was steadily leaking out of his grasp, and his only salvation was knowing he was aware enough of that fact to be able to remove himself from such a potentially volatile situation.

The bus arrived at Diagon Alley soon enough, and Harry was infinitely grateful, as the Knight Bus wasn't very crowded, and despite his moving, he could still hear the drifting sounds of the conversation he had moved to avoid, and his hands were clenching on their own until his knuckles were white and his palm was itching to grasp the wand hidden in the front pocket of the sweatshirt he wore and silence the people before him that had so many opinions about things they knew nothing about.

Almost running down the stairs from the bus, Harry sped into and through the Leaky Cauldron, intent to get into the Alley, do what he needed to do, and then start running. And he didn't intend to stop running until either Voldemort of he himself was dead. But Harry had no intention to run away, he was running for something. To something.

Harry was running to the solution to this all, and he had no intention to be the one left alive, but end up just like the one he had to kill in the process. He mused to himself, it was an odd feeling to know that his days on earth were numbered. This brought a smile to his face, as he realized, Voldemort was in the same position, but just didn't know it yet. Which, in Harry's mind, gave the boy the advantage.

"Hermione would be proud, as I must admit, knowledge _is_ power." He muttered to himself as he tapped the brick and the Alley opened before his eyes.

---


	3. Delusions

Human skin is shockingly durable when held in comparison to other things the average human encounters daily. A scrape against sharp tile leaves but a scratch through the first layer, whereas the same tile leaves a deep gash in the clothing that had first met the jagged edge. Even more remarkable is the skin's ability to knit itself back together and repair that which was harmed before. Sometimes it is as good as new. Other times, it leaves a scar, the body's reminder of the pain that it had endured, and its inability to completely close that wound and forget what it had been.

However, the body's ability to repair itself is fully dependant on its continued existence. And despite how durable the skin is, it is incapable of holding up against certain types of attack.

Jagged tile that scrapes the arm in passing?

Sure.

The jagged teeth of the beast-man with golden eyes, intent on tearing the windpipe from the throat, through the skin?

Impossible.

And so the life behind the eyes fades, and the body begins to shut down, and even in its dying moments, it attempts to spend the last of its remaining energy doing what it can to repair the wound. Despite the fact that it is a completely lost cause, and death is clearly on the horizon, the body fights it. Which once again continues the inconsistency of what the body wants.

The body lives to die. But in its last moments, finds itself dying to live.

---

Ginny had begun a tirade about the war effort, Ron interjecting where he felt the need to, in what they personally believed to be a positive action in the intent to keep Luna up to date on what they knew. Luna, for her part, wasn't listening in the slightest. Instead, her eyes were darting around the Alley. Something told her, whatever it was she was waiting in the Alley for, it was soon to make an appearance.

"And the Order sent guards to the Headquarters. I mean, no one is there, I don't understand what they are wasting resources there for. They _should_ be protecting the Burrow. I mean, if something were to happen to me, Harry wouldn't be able to go on, and now that Professor Dumbledore is gone, where would their war effort be then?"

"Why do you assume Harry wouldn't be able to go on without you, Ginny?" Luna asked the question without a hint of the condescending quality one would expect appearing in her voice. However, her mind was literally drowning in the contempt she held for the redhead in front of her. Luna didn't consider herself a genius, but one thing she was, was very observant.

She knew what this war was about. And what it would boil down to. She didn't claim to know Harry Potter intimately, but she felt she knew enough about his character to rightfully assume that he wouldn't let some juvenile attachment result in the annihilation of an entire group of magical people. Put simply, no matter how much Harry might have enjoyed whatever it was he and Ginny had the year before, he wasn't going to let people die just because the Dark Lord decided the red hair of the Weasleys was an eyesore and decided to rid the world of them.

"Because, _Looney_, Harry loves me. And love is all that matters, its what will win this war, his undying love for me. I made sure of that." Ginny was getting angry, and Luna was beginning to finally see what was going on.

"Love can not be forced, Ginny. It can not be held in a bottle or demanded through a spell. The most that can be hoped is subservience. I leave you with this warning, Harry won't be subservient to the hate of one of the darkest men in past history. What makes you think he will willingly kneel before the 'love' of the female runt of the Weasleys?

"I assure you, _His_ hate is much greater than any emotion you could hold in your body, and what's more, his hate is true. He believes it. Do you love Harry? Or do you love the idea of being with him, of being able to be seen? Everyone knows how you like to be seen, Ginny, that's why you bounce from boy to boy, because it gets focus on you. And you've deluded yourself into thinking people's momentary fascination with your actions equates to loving you, to needing you. I assure you, it doesn't, not in the slightest.

"Grow up, Ginevra, before your meddling weakens Harry, and _then_ where will _our_ war effort be?" Luna was rarely focused on anything enough to become angered, but something about what Ginny Weasley was doing had literally gathered all of the coherence that loomed in Luna's conscious mind and forced it to produce that string of sentences. Luna never claimed to be a diviner, a mystic, or a psychic, but what she knew she was, was observant. And she was currently observing their potential downfall, in the form of a spoiled, bratty little redhead who couldn't see her actions for what they really were.

As Luna mentally turned on her ability to forget that Ginny Weasley; and Ron Weasley for that matter, existed, she mused to herself at the flabbergasted look on both redheads' faces before she had removed them from her mind. And as her eyes returned to dragging slowly along the Alley, searching for that which she had no idea she was looking for and braiding the strands of material she found near her into her hair, Luna felt a fact cement itself into her mind.

No, Luna Lovegood really didn't like Ginevra Weasley. Not much. Not a little. Not at all. Fact was, she was beginning to despise the girl.

And the fact that she wasn't completely sure why that was, was causing her great worry.

---

Hermione Granger sat in her room, mentally detached from the stack of books sitting in front of her, thoughts whirling around in her mind like her own personal tornado of mental torment.

Her mind was replaying the events of the last year, and she wasn't understanding the things she did in the slightest. She likened it, mentally, to a full year of an out-of-body experience. And the books piled in front of her had explained, and verified, her suspicions.

She had been love potioned.

It was an odd love potion, one that she was quite sure had simply been legend birthed from the mind of a muggle with an active imagination, but in fact, it was true, and for a good portion of the last school year, she had been utterly helpless under its effect. The love potion quite literally made her fall in love with the first image of a person she focused on. But that she had spun around and glimpsed Ron was not what had her the most worried.

It was that Ron had been standing in front of a mirror, and she caught a glimpse of herself as well. That was the fact that disturbed Hermione the most, that she had just suffered through an entire year of complete and unabashed narcissism.

The name of her affliction splashed a grimace across her face, as its closeness to the name of the mother who had birthed the disgusting creature named Draco Malfoy made her wince. Anything that she had in common with someone who was so vile made her feel weak in the knees.

The realization that made her collapse from her chair to the floor as sobs shook her body, was how she had treated Harry.

Hermione didn't delude herself, she knew that she wasn't all-knowing, despite how much she liked others to believe she was. But what she did believe was that she knew Harry Potter better than anyone else but the boy himself. And she knew in the back of her mind that, when he had voiced his suspicions about Draco Malfoy, that he wasn't lying. But her love-potion-induced need to be right, made her shrug it off. And thus, he had had to watch the Headmaster die that night, unable to do anything about it. And instead of keeping the Felix Felicis for himself, he had thought of their lives as he fought for his own.

She felt ashamed of herself. And she knew she deserved it. Harry had saved her life more times than she herself could count, and all she had done was not support him, not be there for him, and doubt him. And what hurt her the most were words she spoke when not influenced by the potion, mocking Harry's desire to save everyone he could.

"'Saving-People-Thing', I said…ha! If he didn't have it, I would have been dead on the floor of a girl's restroom years ago, and if not that, dead or worse at the hands of Death Eaters countless times." Hermione felt sick to her stomach. In her attempts to disillusion Harry from his apparent delusions that the boy held in believing he needed to save the world, she had been the one deluded. Not only _was_ he the one that would need to save the world, but she had mentally overstated her necessity.

Harry didn't need her. Any time that it had honestly come down to it, it was Harry by himself, no one else there. Everyone around him would fall, and it would be Harry left standing, having to find his way through, on his own.

No, Hermione needed Harry. Harry held her up, she would have crashed and burned long back without him propping her up, and she realized that her actions that previous school year very well could have removed him from her life. And she couldn't blame him in the least.

She would need some help in remedying the situation that she had put herself in. And the only thing she could think of that could give her the ability to say the things she would need to say to Harry upon finding him, was a golden potion she had felt so free and powerful while taking. So she gathered her things, and slid every galleon, knut or sickle she possessed into a bag, as well as all of her savings in pounds sterling, wrapped her cloak around her, and headed outside to call the Knight Bus.

She was sure she'd be able to find a vial of Felix Felicis somewhere. Even if she had to trek the back-allies of Knockturn Alley to find it, she would obtain it. And she would use some to say the right words to make Harry forgive her, and then give the rest to him for the quest he would soon undertake. And she prayed she was able to fix things enough that he would be willing to let her come and assist him on it.

---

Ronald Weasley gazed blankly at Luna Lovegood. The girl before him wasn't in the least bit remarkable in his eyes, besides her remarkable insanity. Which was why he was so shocked by the blonde's willingness to argue so clearly with his sister. So far into the summer, Ron was subjected to rants on his mother's happiness with Ginny, and how she wished Ron was more like his sister, as far as school work went, 6 times.

He could hear the Weasley matriarch's voice in his head clearly, as she said "Ginny's second in her year in 3 subjects, Ron, what about you? Its time you grew up and realized, Quidditch isn't a course to take and be graded on, it won't help you pass your N.E.W.T.s, either, young man."

Ron would often rebut that argument with the explanation that he didn't do much worse than Harry in most of his classes. And his mother would always answer the same way. "Harry will never have to worry about what effect his N.E.W.T. scores have on his potential job prospects, but you will, Ron. This year, I expect to see a vast jump in your scores, as you go into the tests."

After the fifth time she had gone into that response, Ron had begun to grow resentment. Not for his mother, and her want to have him able to support himself. Not for his sister, who was doing her best in her classes. And not even for the school's grading systems, as he knew if nothing else, it would be slightly slanted toward helping him along because he was friends with Harry. No, his resentment was aimed directly at his aforementioned friend, a feeling that was completely unfounded, and even Ron knew it.

But what he didn't know what that, what he thought was a remark concerning his friend's massive wealth, was, in actuality, a comment rooted in Molly's beliefs. She didn't lie to herself, she had no doubt that something bad was going to happen to Harry Potter, the Order as a whole were quite sure of that fact. And their only hope was that whatever bad came of it, that either it would spur the people as a whole to fight back against oppression, or that the boy would take He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named with him.

It was a grim fact, but along with his many other labels, in the circle that was supposed to be looking out for his safety, he had gained another. The-Boy-Who-Would-Be-Martyred.

---

Fenrir Greyback paced in the alleyway, awaiting the return of his pack, his golden eyes darting around in a sure sign of mentally unstable paranoia, searching for anything that might possibly leap out of the shadows and surprise him. At some point on his walk back towards the lighter side of the alley, he began to mutter, and in his trip back toward the darkest part, it was a full-on conversation with himself, complete with questions, answers, and eventually, an argument.

And that was how his pack found their leader, yelling at himself for having an opinion that he believed to be mutinous.

Fenrir had never been what anyone would call a picture perfect description of mental health. The man had grown up in the midst of war, poverty and destruction, and had to fight and kill to live, long before he became a werewolf. In many ways, long before his turning, Fenrir was a monster. And upon being bitten, his outside finally matched his inside. And for a time, all was well.

But something had changed in their leader's mind, upon the return of Voldemort. It was a longstanding fact in Fenrir's pack during the first rise of the man calling himself the Dark Lord, that Fenrir bowed before no one. And even more, the werewolf in him saw as blood as the same, magical or not, and desired to devour all of it, mud, pure, or anything in-between.

Which was why the pack was so confused when, after a private meeting between Fenrir and Voldemort, their pack leader exited in a daze and commanding his pack to follow the red-eyed man before them. The oldest members of the pack could smell the stench of Voldemort's magic all over their pack leader, but they also knew that Fenrir's word was law.

When Fenrir had called them all together the night before, it was exceedingly clear something had changed. Something at the very depth of the man's personality, but just as there was a wholly new change, there was also a part of him that had returned from wherever it had been. And though he still reeked of Voldemort's magic, it was at a lesser extent.

"My pack, I see that you have returned. And you all look well fed, after our feast last night." The pack murmured in agreement, remembering the feeding frenzy from the previous night. "It will be the first of many, I must say. We celebrate the beginnings of my release from captivity."

"Release?" Fenrir's second, Devlon, questioned. He was the only one secure enough at the time to voice what everyone else gathered behind him was thinking.

Fenrir sneered, and seemed to have a silent argument with himself for a moment, before speaking. "Indeed. I…I have recently been able to remove the shackles of the chains holding me in a cell within my own mind. That…creature…that fool Voldemort dared to use his magic upon me to ensnare our support. I have just been able to break some of its hold on me, and every waking hour I battle this witchcraft he has placed on me. But I _will_ fight it, and we _will_ make him pay."

In the quest to gain dangerous allies, Voldemort had made himself a very dangerous group of enemies.

---


	4. Monster

There are many monsters in the world humans inhabit. The ones envisioned in the minds of children, hiding under beds, in closets, or just around the corner. There are the ones that hide under the guise of trusted friends, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And there are the ones hidden in the shadows, worlds away, building plans to cause imminent demise, just for the sake of doing so.

But it is not the monsters Without that are the most dangerous.

It is the monsters Within.

---

Tom Riddle was many things, but he was not a delusional individual. He hesitated at calling himself a man because, in many ways, he was no longer a man.

The realization of that fact had caused a compounded effect upon the self-styled dark lord. Tom Riddle didn't begin walking down the path Lord Voldemort now found himself tumbling down, with the intention to become immortal. Tom Marvolo Riddle loved knowledge, and he had simply been pursuing the probability of immortality. And that led to searching for the possibility of it. And then that led to testing it for himself.

Power corrupts.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is no power greater than power over death, in the minds of many. And as much as he loved to consider himself different from the "idiot masses", Tom Riddle found himself deeply routed in that frame of mind as well.

One horcrux became two.

Two became four.

Four became six.

Voldemort allowed his mind to wander away from the horcruxes he had created, and drift to the ones he had left. For what was, once, mattered not. What mattered was what was left.

One was lost in the process of restoring him to existence after the death he suffered on that infamous night in the waning moments of October.

Another destroyed by the same young boy because of the idiocy of Lucius in slipping the very first horcrux into the hands of the young Weasley girl. Said actions eventually leading to its destruction by the Potter child, ironically in the same place it was first created.

Another lost at the hands of Albus Dumbledore the same year of the man's demise. This allowed a dark smile to slide across Voldemort's reptilian face as he reminisced about it.

But that smile was soon wiped off as he thought back about the locket. The treachery…

Voldemort's dark red eyes seemed to cloud over as he considered the locket. He could still feel it sometimes, but not directly. It was like some kind of feedback, as if the locket wavered in and out of existence, or would gather enough energy to send a beacon out, and then be rendered silent until it was able to bide more power to repeat the action.

This disturbed Voldemort a great deal.

Three Horcruxes gone.

One dying.

One by his side.

And the other…

---

The average person was much too oblivious, or too caught up in anything they were doing, to make notice of what scampered along their peripheral. Yes, Harry had learned this fact of human nature from his relatives. Many a night he would need to steal away into the pantry to retrieve something to quiet the deafening roar of his belly, and often times it would be the time that his aunt would wander down the stairs.

Petunia Dursley held a lot of secrets. Harry Potter knew most of them.

Hidden in the bottom of the fruit bowl, beneath the apples, the oranges, and the mound of grapes, was a pack of cigarettes. Under the guise of the apple juice container, sat a fairly large amount of whisky.

It was an ingenious set up, even Harry had to admit. The rotund mass of his cousin, and the mountainous blob of his uncle both avoided fruit or fruit-products as if making contact with them would cause them an outbreak of the plague.

It had been on such a night of hunger in which he snuck out of his room to locate something edible, when the events of the previous night had struck. One moment he had just taken an apple and was in the process of rearranging the fruit bowl so its presence would not be missed, and so the presence of the cigarettes wouldn't be revealed, and the next moment a searing pain shot through his head, as if it had been pierced by a white-hot blade.

His mouth was dry.

His eyes were watering.

He was hyperventilating…but his body felt like it was suffocating.

And all he could focus on was the voice echoing back and forth through his mind, telling him that it needed to be ended.

Harry shook himself mentally to stop that path of thought. He hadn't time to dwell on his inadequacies in losing a battle within his own mind, when he held home-field advantage. He felt weak and he refused to feel that way again, ever.

With determination he continued his march down the Alley, keeping close to the furthest walls, hiding in plain sight, and for the most part passing completely unnoticed.

Those that did notice him thought nothing of him, all except for one, who sat casually braiding strands into her hair, and watching him pass. Her companions thought nothing of her watching him, as they assumed she was staring blankly again, watching something none of them could see.

And in effect, she was.

---

Fenrir Greyback narrowed his eyes as he observed the street before him. His nose was working overtime, as his eyes tried to locate what his other senses told him was before him. He was searching for something, and although he _knew_ it was in front of him, everything his eyes spoke to his mind told him there was nothing there.

"_More of these confounding magicks!"_ Fenrir grumbled to himself, pacing back and forth knowing he needed to find a way onto the property.

"Devlon, to me." Fenrir ordered, and the man stepped up next to Fenrir. "Tell me what you know of magic that can remove buildings from plain sight." Fenrir sniffed, "My eyes tell me nothing is there. But the scent…"

Devlon had grown up in magic. In fact, the man had, at one point, been a Ravenclaw, so infatuated with learning that it stayed with him even as the more base instincts of his transformation molded him a new personality after his Turning. The man would often still be found indulging in a book, and many believed it was why Fenrir and Devlon worked in tandem so well. Devlon was the sense to Fenrir's rashness, and the intellect to the other man's brawn.

"If your senses tell you it's there, then it really is, and all the magic is doing is disguising it. Probably simply a mash-up of charms designed to hide the property visually, confuse anyone who wanders onto the property into leaving it, and then removing the memory of every having stumbled on it from their minds. In short, if you walked from the lawn of number 10 to the lawn of number 14, and the property being hidden was in-between, then upon leaving said hidden property, you'd have forgotten you were ever on it, thus thinking you had simply walked from 10 to 14 and that there was nothing between them."

Fenrir's mind wrapped around what he had just been told, and he thought of how to get around it. "So what you are telling me is, if I were to attempt to approach the property on my own power, I would immediately be under the power of the spell, causing me to leave it again, and then forget I'd ever approached it?" Devlon nodded. "I have an idea."

---

Nymphadora Tonks padded along the front room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Remus was in the kitchen finding them something to eat, as Tonks curled up on the couch and flicked the magical radio to a station playing smooth music. The candles had been lit, and it was their one day for the next few days of being alone together. Remus had switched his shift, his turn for watching Harry, with another Order member in order to have that night with Tonks, as she would be going off on assignment soon.

Tonks was just smiling as Remus entered the threshold to the sitting room with the two plates in his hands when the door was impacted and splintered. A shower of wood shards sprayed across the sitting room, and a form tumbled in before rolling gracefully to its feet.

"Ingenious idea, whatever the magic is that hides this place. But easily broken." Fenrir turned around and leveled his sight on the now empty doorway for but a moment before turning his eyes to Remus. "Too bad all it takes is someone to throw you at the property, making it so you can't turn around and wander off, and it's absurdly easily broken. Complete luck I didn't slam into the side of the building, I must say."

As he spoke, Devlon's form came flying toward the door, propelled by another of Fenrir's pack as they stood outside the property. Devlon caught the top of the doorframe, flipped himself over as he entered, and jumped off the wall just above the door to land next to Fenrir, as to slow his acceleration. Devlon's eyes immediately went to Tonks, who had her eyes locked on Remus as if looking for an answer, but her hand was also sliding along the couch toward where her wand had been left. He bared his teeth at her, and she flinched instantly.

"Do not worry, Lupin. We come simply to talk." Fenrir paused for a moment, before narrowing his eyes and allowing a sinister grin to slide across his face as his eyes made an almost imperceptible flick toward Tonks. "For now."

---

Hermione looked around nervously and she walked down the pathway. She was heading down the Alley, mentally trying to compile a list of every apothecary she was aware of, either in Diagon or Knockturn, and therefore not looking directly in front of her. She collided with another form, and was sent sprawling to the ground. She looked up immediately to find the form she had run into gazing down at her almost inquiringly. His head was cocked to the side, as if appraising her as she sat on the ground, leaning back as if trying to move further from his gaze.

Which confused her, considering it was, "Harry?"

Harry nodded once, lazily at her, before his eyes wandered away from her and scanned the Alley, almost as if he was looking for something, but had no idea what it was. Suddenly his eyes set, and again, his head tilted to the side as he observed whatever it was. Hermione followed his sight the best she could, and found the forms of Luna Lovegood and Ginny Weasley. Ginny was yelling at Luna, it could be seen simply from her body language, while Luna sat calmly on the crate beneath her. She would respond with something that visually barely even registered as talking, calm and likely very airy words that would set Ginny off even more.

Harry observed this, but as Ginny stormed off in a rage, with Ron following behind her, Hermione noticed two things. One, Harry's eyes didn't follow Ginny away as the former girl expected them to. And two, during the whole argument, Luna never looked at Ginny. No, Luna stared straight forward, and seemingly, straight at Harry. Luna tilted her head the same way Harry had, as if considering him as much as he seemed to be doing the same to her.

Hermione pulled herself to her feet, and simply stood there, unsure of what to say, or if she would somehow be _intruding_ if she interrupted whatever the moment going on between them was. It was significant, even if she didn't realize how so, but she felt both that she was intruding by watching whatever it was, but also that she needed to be a part of it because it was something that had meaning.

"Harry?"

Harry didn't look at her, continuing to stare forward, but straightened his head and leaned it forward, as if it would help him see further as he gazed at Luna. "Hermione?"

"What are you doing, Harry?"

Harry considered the question for a moment, before making an almost unnoticeable nod to the person he was eye-locked with. "Moongazing." Was all he said, before he turned, nodded once to her, and headed back the way he came. And Hermione was left with many questions. The most pressing of which was, "What was Harry doing in Knockturn Alley…"

---


	5. Ignorance

Sometimes humans are incapable of seeing what lies before them. The mind works in such a way that the most evident of things can pass the grasp of conscious comprehension, just because it isn't favorable to its beliefs.

"Blissfully Ignorant" is often a term used to describe such things.

But in _Blissful Ignorance, _often times, the most important of matters slip past in full sight, and such things come back to be important at a later time.

Humans often are the cause of their own demise simply because; for the time being, "It feels better to not know."

If "Knowledge is Power,"

Then ignorance is weakness.

And in a war, weakness leads to death.

---

"What are you staring at now? Another of your imaginary friends?" Ginny spat vindictively at Luna. The redheaded girl had _not_ taken losing the verbal war lightly, and was left to stew in her anger.

"Insults are simply shoddy substitutes for true wit, Ginny." Luna said in such a vapid voice, as if simply stating a fact, that it put the youngest Weasley aback, not knowing how to respond to it. Another insult would prove Luna correct in the assumption that Ginny possessed no wit, however, it was clearly a very thinly veiled insult in of itself. "And for the record, I suppose you could say that yes, I am staring at something you can't see. And in all honesty, you've never been able to see this thing and never will be able to, for what it truly is."

"And why's that?" Ginny asked, speaking it through her clenched teeth as she seethed at losing this battle of the minds with someone who everyone wrote off as certifiably insane.

"Because, Ginny, you're too caught up in seeing what you want to see, that you miss what is actually present. Sometimes you need to learn to simply see the world for all it is." Luna paused as if considering something, all the while still staring forward at whatever it was. Ginny wouldn't give the blonde the satisfaction of looking that way, so she stood, waiting. "All the more reason why you and Harry will never work out. Because you can't see him."

This set the redhead off something wicked. Her eyes narrowed, her jaw set, and her hands clenched so tightly her knuckles whitened. But all the while, as Ginevra Weasley looked fit to commit murder with her bare hands in the Alley, Luna didn't even spare her a glance. She just kept staring forward. Ginny finally shouted a brief screech in her frustration before storming away, Ron following behind her, glancing back at Luna in utter confusion as he did so.

Luna tilted her head to the side and continued to stare forward. She smiled slightly as she watched the form she had been observing walk away, and only then did she realize that right next to him, was Hermione.

The brunette stared at Luna with a look that was completely foreign. Hermione Granger looked honestly confused by what she had just seen, and it was very clear to Luna that the girl was none too happy about that situation, not in the least. Hermione straightened her shoulders and marched across the Alley toward Luna.

She was just coming within speaking distance of the girl when a wave of heat rushed past them both, and a billowing cloud of smoke with licks of fire came rocketing out of what…used to be Knockturn Alley.

---

Harry was just nearing the exit to the Alley when the explosion went off. Suddenly, there was a loud pop as simultaneous apparation filled Diagon Harry turned around, to see roughly 25 Death Eaters, all clustered together, gazing at the remains of Knockturn Alley.

There had been over 60 of them.

But the 25 left were more than enough to cause complete havoc and chaos on the Alley, and all of the people too paralyzed with fear and shock to even attempt to defend themselves would be easy to destroy as they stood helplessly by.

Harry turned around and pulled his wand out, as well as the one that he had taken from Snape, and crept along the walls again, back toward the Alley proper, scanning the area.

---

It was not the crimson light of stunners that began peppering the nearest Death Eater, as he gazed down at a small girl, no older than 8, debating torture or death for her. He didn't even notice he was under attack until the arm he had bent to allow his hand to rest on his chin as a sign of his indecision, fell to the ground. A gouge had opened in his chest as the spell had grazed it in lopping off his arm, and immediately blood began to pour from it and down his body like a waterfall.

It wasn't bright red blood, no, it was the dark red of a dying body. But the Death Eater never got a chance to contemplate this, as his eyes clouded over and he collapsed in a pool of his own blood, his body falling so that his stump of an arm landed right below what had once been attached to his body, making it appear to anyone looking from far away, that it had never been removed from his body.

Harry kept moving without a second glance after his first spell.

---

Hermione was standing, paralyzed in fear at all of the black cloaks that had appeared in the Alley, as well as at the amount of destruction that was prevalent where Knockturn Alley had once been.

Where there had once been two buildings on the outer edge of both Knockturn, between Diagon and Knockturn proper, the stone of the buildings was literally liquefied into dripping on the cobblestone.

Hermione was yanked back quite literally by her hair as a cannonball hex just missed where she had once been. Her back impacted the ground harshly, and as she looked up to see what had just happened, she saw Luna moving away from Hermione slowly, backing toward a kiosk that was standing near them, and motioning for Hermione to follow.

The brunette scrambled off the ground and made her way behind the kiosk as well, her eyes wide and her body shaking slightly. She watched as a Death Eater blasted a hole through the chest of a cowering man as he tried to hide his family behind him, and then the Death Eater placed the now dead man's son under Imperius, and made him choke his own mother to death.

The boy was released from Imperius, and upon looking at his now dead mother, he burst into sobs, and he wept all the way until his life was ended by bone-breaking curse to the back of the skull.

Tears rolled down Hermione's face as she observed all of this, and it wasn't until Luna removed her hand from Hermione's mouth did the latter realize it was being covered. Luna pointed down the Alleyway, and they noticed a figure creeping along the wall, its back pressed tightly to the wall. Hermione had just seen that sweater not moments before.

She looked to Luna and mentally willed Luna to look toward the same place, and shockingly, the blonde did, nodding as Hermione looked to her. "We have to do something…" Hermione whispered, her body shaking as she began to panic. But there was something to how Luna was gazing toward Harry over Hermione's shoulder. Whereas when Luna had literally saved Hermione's life and found them cover, the blond girl had seemingly lost some of the detached aura that usually permeated from her, that same look had returned. And for some reason, Hermione was comforted.

"Yes, Hermione, we do need to do something. We need to stay out of the way. And I think you know that as well as I do."

"But he's alone…and there's so many of them!" Hermione was in a full-on panic, as she reached for her wand, "At least we should go back him up, or send up the beacon for the Aurors!"

"Hermione…half of the Alley is in flames right now. My guess is, if there were Aurors coming, they'd be here by now. Probably someone among their group, keeping an anti-apparation ward up. He'd be out of their main group as to not be hit by stray spells. Best way for us to help Harry, is to find him and incapacitate him so the Aurors can arrive." Luna was stunningly vapid as she spoke this, almost as if discussing the weather, or the latest issue of The Quibbler.

Hermione was so traumatized by everything going on around her, that she could only nod and follow. The sound of a small child crying, as well as the wet sound of blood and flesh sending a chill down Hermione's spine. This truly was war, and she was in no way as ready for it as she had thought she was.

---

Harry continued moving forward. There was a Death Eater who had strayed from the fray that was the pseudo-massacre taking place in Diagon Alley and was looking at the remains of Knockturn forlornly. The boy clasped both wands with one hand and cast the Summoning Charm on the Death Eater. As the startled man came toward Harry, he cast the strongest Banishing Spell he knew.

The Death Eater's face slammed into the wall with such intensity that the crunch of what was likely all of the bones in his face shattering was audible even in the cries of fleeing people, and intense battle.

Harry kept moving, keeping sure to avoid the teeth scattered across the ground, as to prevent an embarrassing, and potentially attention-drawing stumble.

As he moved his way toward more cover to use in his journey toward the next Death Eater standing relatively alone, he glanced down at his wands. In his mind, he saw them dripping with blood, but it was an odd sense of reality that echoed in the back of his mind, reminding him that the Death Eaters were playing for keeps. And it wasn't the time for stunners, disarming, or binding. That even if they were put in Azkaban, they would simply be released by paying off the government or by blaming mental tampering. They needed to be put down, and they needed to stay that way.

And as he settled into a resolute agreement with that frame of mind, the blood on his hands in his mind's eye simply seemed to dry up until there was nothing there but the wands he held.

He was making his way toward the next straggling Death Eater when he heard screams, and all thoughts of guerilla warfare disappeared from Harry's mind, as he knew that scream.

It was Hermione.

He didn't think, he simply acted, and he knew if nothing else, that was where his strength was, and with him so far outnumbered, he didn't have the ability to not play at his best, because it would leave him dead.

---

Bellatrix Lestrange was having an odd morning. She had been having a grand time in the back of the pub in Knockturn Alley that served as a meeting place to the Voldemort-Faithful, when she had seen a form walking at a fast pace away from the establishment. She called out to MacNair and Dolohov to follow her to find out why this figure was in such a rush, when she heard the beginnings of the explosions.

Explosions in the plural. It had begun as just one. But one soon turned into many as every alcoholic beverage in the pub added fuel to the fire. Bellatrix looked down the pathway, and two units down from the pub was the Knockturn Apothecary.

She muttered expletives, and did a short skip apparation, not moving far, but far enough away, making it much faster.

She was one of the few who made it out, more than half of the ranks that had been in the pub were incinerated.

Her curses came out as yells more than verbalization of magic, as she took out her frustration at the realization that her Lord would be taking out _his_ frustration on her. She had turned at the feminine scream as well as all those around her, and it would be her momentary undoing, as her distraction caused her to miss the wooden kiosk come hurtling at her, slamming her and MacNair into the wall of the Alley. MacNair had been leaning down to pick up a battleaxe he had conjured from the severed fingers of a young man when the wooden structure had impacted them both, and his head was slammed into the stone wall, smearing it with blood and knocking him unconscious. Bellatrix heard a snap and felt searing pain through her leg, as well as feeling the bones in her right wrist shatter.

She still somehow maintained a hold on her wand, and pointed it, she hoped, at the magically reinforced wooden cart, and blasted it with _Reducto_.

Her left hand wrapped around her right wrist to steady it, she cast a numbing charm on her apparently broken leg, allowing her to ignore the pain, and she moved forward on sheer willpower, dragging her now deadened leg along with her.

She heard the clang of the battleaxe MacNair had created striking the cobblestone, as he used it as a crutch to stand, stumbling back and forth as his concussion caused the world to spin, Bellatrix was sure. But she hadn't time for concern or to even bother wondering where Dolohov had gotten off to, as she searched for someone to take her pain out on.

---

Antonin Dolohov had been having a grand time, sending rare and exotic curses around, showering any and all around him indiscriminately. He even occasionally cursed others in Death Eater garb, rationalizing that how was he to know if they were true Death Eaters or simply someone else in the garb, using it to get close enough to him to take him out.

He had taken charge of guarding the colleague of his who was maintaining the anti-apparation ward. He had accidentally removed the original guard from the land of the living with a wonderfully placed Arabic Burrowing Spell. The now dead man's head could quite literally be seen through. So he had taken the duty upon himself. He glanced to the side at one point and saw a face he recognized.

The girl screamed at seeing him, unable to fight her better judgment, as she had to dive away from the flame cutting curse that had slammed into her years before. Dolohov was moving in for a follow-up, as the girl looked to have hurt her ankle during her evasive action, when a Cutting Curse just missed his face, but grazed the wall beside him, sending shards of stone at his face. It was pure luck the man didn't lose an eye, but even through the pain, Dolohov tossed up a strong shielding spell, taking care to keep it in position to protect the defenseless warder behind him.

Harry sent two more _Diffindo_ spells at the shield, before rolling to the side, making note that the spells didn't do anything but slam into the shield and dissipate. Harry's roll put him near Hermione, and Luna scurried over, deflecting a few spells thrown either with shields or by simply conjuring little metal statues of odd creatures that would intercept a spell and disappear with a pop. Harry was in the process of levitating Hermione when he started receiving fire from the other side of Dolohov, as Bellatrix had made her way over toward them.

There was no baby talk present, as she simply laid into their general vicinity with _Reducto_, _Crucio_, Bone Shattering Hexes and good old-fashioned Flame-spewing spells.

Harry knew his strongest shielding spell wouldn't be able to stand up to the spells headed their way if made to cover all three of them, so he tossed up his strongest shield spell over Hermione, grabbed Luna and incanted _"Accio Wall!"_

Because of the mass of the building's wall, it wouldn't come to Harry, which meant that Harry was therefore quite literally yanked toward the wall, Luna in tow. Harry canceled the spell before the slammed into the wall, turning his body and bracing himself so he hit the wall and Luna's body impacted him. With the air leaving his lungs from her body slamming into his chest, he used the exhale to cast _"Mobilicorpus," _before yanking his wand toward them, sending Hermione streaming toward them.

Where she had been, a small crater was created as Bellatrix's Cannonball spell slammed into the ground, creating a cloud or shards of broken stone as well as some stone so finely destroyed that it was nothing but dust left to float in the air. The cloud of dust disguised any other spells that were cast, and when the air cleared more, Bellatrix was standing nearer to Dolohov and the warder, MacNair using his large axe more as a cane than anything else, walking wobbly, but it was hard for Harry to mentally count the man out, as he was walking with an axe that was about as tall as Harry himself.

It was Luna who noticed it. Dolohov's shield was still intact, but at the man's feet, inside the shield, were several stones that had obviously rolled over from Bellatrix's powerful spell. She whispered to Harry "It seems that physical things can enter the shield." And Harry let his mind process that information, as the two sides seemed to be at a standstill. They were all considering each other, trying to find out the best way to defeat the other.

MacNair was succumbing to blood loss, and Bellatrix's anger was making her body shake and she was clearly becoming more irrational. This was evident as she yelled in frustration and cast another Cannonball spell at one of her own men, which sent the man's collapsed skull bouncing down the street behind him.

Finally, Harry's mind settled on the opening to his fight with Dolohov. His _Diffindo_ had caused a gash in the stone next to the man, and had showered him with rock shards. "Stay with Hermione, and keep your strongest shield up, just in case." He spoke resolutely to Luna before he suddenly took off running, drawing enemy fire toward him. He ran, and as he did, he cast as many _Diffindo_ spells as he possibly could at the stone wall above and around Dolohov. The man laughed it off, expecting them to impact his shield, but instead the slammed into the rock above his shield, and he didn't realize it until it was too late, as the rock fell and began to tear at his clothes. The man had to move quickly away from the rocks, and that was when Harry saw his opening.

His run had positioned Harry near MacNair, but the man was too far gone to even realize he had his chance, so Harry simply banished the staggering man into the wall, before summoning the battleaxe. He tossed it forward before blasting it with a Banishing Charm, directly toward the shielded warder.

The axe headed for the warder, and the magic maintaining the spell died upon meeting the shield Dolohov had set up, making it so any diversion the axe may have done to avoid the living man was cancelled out, leaving the warder in two pieces on the cobblestone. As the anti-apparation wards fell, there was a deafening _"Pop_" as all of the Aurors who had been trying to get into the Alleyway mass-apparated in. Bellatrix's screams echoed down the Alley even as she disappeared, along with the living of her colleagues, as they all apparated out to escape.

Harry let out a deep exhale, before collapsing on the ground in exhaustion, placing his hands over his face and screaming into his hands.

---

The medics arrived and began checking over anyone still breathing. Hermione had begun to regain her composure at looking Harry over and not seeing anything immediately wrong, that was until the witch that was checking over Harry called over two more people. Hermione got herself up and limped over toward him, and gasped in shock as they removed his hooded sweatshirt. There was a long gash going parallel to his waist across his lower back, as well as deep bruising in the same place. Apparently he had broken ribs as well, likely from shielding Luna from impacting the wall, but he wasn't wincing or even showing much pain. His jaw was set.

Hermione swallowed audibly. She wasn't ready for war. She was in tears even as she watched Harry be attended to, and the thought of what might have been with the cut across his back caused her to shake uncontrollably. She'd seen death, dishonesty, destruction, and many other things in her young life. Had brushes with death in many forms, and even looked murderers in the face.

But nothing could prepare her for that day. Watching her friend, who she'd known for years, kill in order to protect the people around her, disturbed her. She was torn, between her morals and what she had just seen take place before her eyes.

And more than anything else, she was angry with herself. She had once more, stood by. And it had once again, been just Harry against the world, as he defended everyone.

She felt more useless than usual, and limped herself back to a bench, wrapped her arms around her hunched back, and wept. She felt a small hand on her back that patted her there for a moment, before she heard Luna's far-away voice, as the girl walked away from her.

"Cry not, little one. For the world is nothing without balance. For every fear, there will be courage. For every evil, there will be good. And for every night, there will be a day." Luna stopped during her walk away, but didn't turn around to look at Hermione. "My mother used to say that to me when I'd have nightmares. Consider Harry to be our courage. Out good. Our day, at the end of a very long night. If you dwell so long on the night that you miss the entire day, you will be left with nothing but a life of nights. Dwell on the fear too long, you lose the courage. Get too caught up in the evil, and you'll miss the good.

"Right now he is fighting very hard, Hermione. And needing to fight your perceptions, your beliefs, your morals, and everything else, isn't going to help him in the least. He needs your support, not your reprimand." Luna continued walking away from Hermione.

---

It wasn't until the blonde was near Harry and conversing with the healers, that the Hermione glanced to her side as she laid her head on the back of the bench.

Sitting next to her was one of the small figurines Luna had been conjuring and sending to intercept spells. A simply spell that Luna knew that quite literally kept them all at least relatively uninjured, if not alive outright. And Hermione was hit even harder with the realization of what had just transpired.

Harry had saved them all.

And in some cases, Luna saved Harry, while Hermione sat on the ground like an invalid.

Her tears renewed as she continued to realize that she would have to do something. She cared deeply for Harry, and refused to see him die in the process of saving them all, which meant she needed to make a change. Oh what she wouldn't have given for more Felix Felicies.

Her passion to obtain more, and a ready supply, of the potion was revived, and stronger than ever.

She lifted the small statue to observe it, but dropped it, as she watched the magical cleaning crew in front of her removed a body, just for the arm to separate and flop onto the ground with a sickening sound, strings of the coagulated blood stretching out. That man had been likely the first Harry engaged.

Her resolution to understand and to deal with what she was seeing went out the window, and after emptying the contents of her stomach into a nearby corner and then cleaning it away with _Scourgify_, she fled the Alley.

---

Harry watched her go silently, before looking over as Luna sat down next to him. She created another figurine in her hand, before tossing it into the air. He followed it with his eyes, as she blasted it with a curse he'd never heard of, and it exploded into a shower of fireworks. He smiled, and she repeated the process. After the fifth time, he mimicked the wand motion, unsure of the words, but found a way to create a passable imitation.

His figurines weren't nearly as polished, nor were they a shimmering bronze color like Luna's. They were an odd silvery color, with the edges a golden color, as if someone had over-polished something made of tin. However, he was disappointed when his figurine didn't explode. Instead, the spell seemed to ricochet off of the figurine and go shooting off into the sky.

Luna gazed at him intently, never speaking a word, before copying his movements, and was able to create something just like his. She then wrapped her hand around his and did the wand motions while holding his hand, and was able to have him create figurines like her's, that exploded when hit by a spell.

It was a companionable silence as they did this, the medics fixing Harry up, before he stood shakily, and walking from the Alley, despite the protests, he disappeared into Muggle London.

Luna was at his side the whole time, leaving behind only two figurines where they had been sitting.

A figurine that was quite clearly her, made in the bronze color of her created figurines. And to its side, in the varnished tin of Harry's creation, was the aforementioned man. Both were maneuvered so they were back to back, and had their wands out and pointed, as if ready to fire a spell at any moment.

The figurine Hermione had dropped was one of the girl herself.

It lay many feet away at the foot of the bench, rolled behind one of the legs on its side. The bodies of the Death Eaters and the civilians alike were still scattered around the Alley, and destruction lay all around.

---

Night fell, and no one thought anything of the figures enough to bother moving them. And incidentally, the ones of Luna and Harry seemed somehow attached to the ground. And any spell cast at either of them to remove them somehow seemed to hit the one of Harry, and bounce off into the distance, regardless of where the spell was cast.

The figurines would stand resolutely there for quite some time, all during the repairs to the Alleyway.

By the time the Alley was fully repaired, all three of the people would once again meet in Diagon.

The most important of symbols are almost always purely accidental in their creation.

Accidental in their creation. But never coincidental in their existence.

---


	6. Self

Comprehension is one of Knowledge's most powerful weapons.

Learning any and everything does no good if it is not understood. Understanding what is seen gives much greater power than seeing all, but understanding little.

Solutions to problems can be found in simple things, if seen correctly.

Answers to questions are dependant entirely on the understanding of the solution.

But sometimes the true power of comprehension, is gaining an understanding of one's self.

_Temet Nosce._

---

Fenrir Greyback was not a talkative man.

So it was a bit disturbing to the inhabitants of what was once the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, when he went into a detailed; and fairly creative, story on the pleasure he got out of biting a young child. And then extolled the happiness he got from subsequently keeping track of them to observe their first turning. Remus sat in his chair, clenching his hands so tightly on the armrests that at one point Devlon was sure the former man's fingernails would splinter into the wood of his seat.

Remus finally tired of the games. "Why are you here." His words were brusque, and came out grated through clenched teeth. Tonks lay unconscious on the couch across from him, Fenrir having placed himself so her head laid on his lap, his dirty and cracked fingernails running through her hair. The jagged edges had bright-colored strands of her purple hair attached to them, having been cut cleanly by his yellow nails, which Remus watched intently as the would pause much too long at the woman's neck during Fenrir's down-stroke.

"We know of your rag-tag little group." Fenrir paused, as if considering his next words, before he nodded to himself, seeming set on what they were. "We've come here to tell you, stay out of our way."

"And what, Greyback, are we to _stay out of._" Remus spoke these words, but something told him he didn't want to know the answer.

"Something you should be quite familiar with, Remus." Fenrir grabbed a handful of Tonks' hair and yanked her up, before depositing her on the floor, which shocked the woman into consciousness just in time to feel the hard floor rushing to meet her. Fenrir stood and leaned over to look directly into Remus' eyes.

"_Revenge._"

---

The silence echoed across every wall in the moderate-sized room, before coming back to Harry, louder than ever. The darkness was like an amplifier of the emptiness of sound, and at the same time, a blanket around him. It held him gently, the darkness and the lack of sound.

Harry had commandeered them a room in a hotel, and it hadn't even been difficult. Luna distracted the young man who worked at the counter, and a simply summoning charm, and the key was in his hand. This served a simple purpose, removing the key from them, so they could remove the room from the hotel. Luna covered the door of the room in as many muggle-repelling and notice-me-not charms as she knew, while Harry sat silently in the large chair by the window, staring blankly out of it.

Hours later, in the veil of the darkness, he was still seated there, looking out of the windows. Luna lay asleep on the bed, the sound of her breathing lost in the reflection of the silence.

Harry liked it that way. It let him think.

It let him plan.

---

Harry Potter didn't possess an encyclopedic spell inventory.

He didn't speak several languages, nor did he know the magic of those different tongues.

What he did have, was a good amount of power, and very good instinct.

In the heat of battle, shuffling through too many spells, could get you killed. Harry was without such a problem, as his spell category wasn't huge. It didn't need to be.

Anything he could ever need to handle, could be done with creative application of simple spells.

Incidentally, it reminded him of something he had read back in the Hogwarts library. And it was reinforced by things he had seen in practical application.

The more familiar someone became with a particular spell, the easier their body handled the casting of it. It was as if the body had channels for certain spells. The more they were cast, the more the user's magic banged through those channels and smoothed them clear of resistance, until it was streamlined and casting was easy.

More extensive use, allowed an almost…intimate relationship with the spell. Allowed it to become more powerful that it otherwise should have been able to be. Allowing it to do things it shouldn't have been able to do. Like the times Harry himself had cast _Stupefy_ and blown several people back with its power.

Stunning Spells didn't move bodies.

Almost made Harry sad upon realizing how little use his prowess with the Stunning Spell would be to him in the coming times.

Stunning Spells didn't win wars.

He was in a war, he realized, after that fight before. The Death Eaters were playing for keeps, and he would have to as well. A part of him nagged in the back of his mind, that in some ways, he wasn't any different than those he fought. But the more predominant part of his mind reminded him that, while they both fought and killed, to win, they did so to control. And Harry himself, did so, not because it was "right", and not even just because he "had to", but because it was honestly just him against the rest of the world. Saving everyone rested solely on his shoulders.

Stunning Spells didn't save lives.

He mentally reviewed what had gone on earlier in the day, and considering everything that he had done.

Summoning.

Banishing.

Severing.

It wasn't exotic. It wasn't extensive. They took several hours to learn and get down to easy use for anyone who had never used them before. Any third-year could learn and use the spells.

But Harry made a pact with himself, to perfect them. He had gone up against several trained Death Eaters, using only those spells. He had a few others that he saw use for, and the irony of it all was, they were all spells he himself had at least brought up in the DA.

He would be proof that someone could go against Death Eaters with simple, school-taught spells, and win. And he would win. Because he had to.

If he didn't win,

_Everyone_ lost.

---

Luna awoke to Harry sitting at the coffee table in the hotel room they had taken as their own.

She padded through the slight archway that separated the sleeping area from the area with the television, the coffee table, and the couch. Her hair was a mess of dirty-blonde strands, and her eyes filled with sleep, a sure sign that she had rested. However, Harry looked mostly as he did the day before. His eyes, however, held no sign of sleep-deprivation, instead, they looked even sharper than they had before.

He caught eyes with her, and seemed to have attempted a smile. "I'll go down, and find us something to eat." And with that, he was up and out of the room.

---

He returned around 25 minutes later, a cart with food on it, and several bags of luggage under the bottom.

"I didn't know you had money, Harry." Luna stated simply.

"I have a good amount on me. I went to Gringott's earlier yesterday, but I didn't use any of it to get this. Simple distractions of asking questions, and I had the food."

"No one noticed plates of food disappearing?"

"Let's just say I have experience in needing to take food without being noticed." He paused, while moving the plates of food to the coffee table, before turning back to the cart and kicking the luggage bags off. "These…well, saw some people in the lobby, looked about our size. They turned to scream at their kids and call them names in front of bystanders, so I took their bags. Seemed an even trade."

They were quiet as they ate, Harry excusing himself to shower after only eating a bit, and then picking at his food for a while. He returned to the room with a towel over his tattered jeans, and popped open the bigger of the two suitcases. Dropping the towel as well as the jeans, leaving him in his underpants, he pulled out a pair of jeans and pulled them on, as well as socks and a pair of heavy boots he found in the bottom of the bag.

Harry sifted through the rest of his confiscated clothing, as Luna stood to go shower as well. She tried not to look at Harry, out of respect for his privacy. Not physically, as she had no fear of, or lack of comfort with, nudity. No, this was more, respect for his privacy emotionally. Scars laced his body, and he truly looked like the boy who had seen war. And the part that hurt her the most was, the war had just begun for everyone else. But for Harry, the war began when he was 15 months old. It took a hiatus for some time, but the day he entered Hogwarts, the place believed to be the "safest place in the country", the war began again for him.

Luna wouldn't ask him about it. Because everyone's personal journey was their own. Sometimes, they would meet people going the same direction, and for a time, their journey would be made together. But in the end, every person's path toward their ultimate goal was their own business. And for their own reasons.

She hesitated at saying that everyone reaching their ultimate goal was on their own backs. Because it wasn't true, and she had proof in the room with her. For the Wizarding world, everyone's hopes and dreams for a brighter future, all rested solely on Harry's shoulders.

She would make sure that her path paralleled his for as long as possible. She would stand by him as best she could. Because her hopes and dreams rested with him as well, but she refused to allow her life to be so out of her own hands that she would turn it all over to Harry and his accomplishing it, and sit quietly in her home and wait.

That worked for others, but not Luna.

Besides. Gnargles, the more ferocious cousin of the Nargles, were known to be drawn toward fair-weathered friends. Disloyalty was the cardinal sin to the Gnargles. And Luna rather enjoyed being free of them.

So she promised herself to stand by him. Whatever it took. And though she hated to have to admit it to herself, she would.

She,

And the rest of the world,

Needed Harry, a lot more than he needed them.

---

Walden MacNair died of massive blood loss, there, on the floor of Voldemort's throne room.

The smoke from the magical cuts across his body still rose from him as his body was kicked and stepped on as the other Death Eaters walked from the room.

Failure was not admissible.

Voldemort didn't like torturing and killing his own men. No, in fact, it was quite the opposite, he hated to have to abuse and sometimes murder his own. But complacency in the men, was the opening steps on the path to their demise. And better their death in private, at his hand, than in the field at the hands of others, where his opposition can gain morale off of the small victory.

Prune the branches, to save the tree.

It was a necessary evil that he only indulged in for the greater good of his plan.

It truly was ironic to be using those words, the man formerly known as Tom Riddle noted. "For the greater good," they were words that seemed much more suited for his assumed greatest adversary.

His _once_ greatest adversary, he mused to himself, as he reflected on the death of Albus Dumbledore quite fondly.

Thinking upon that, reminded him of another problem he had, awaiting solving. "Bella, to my side." He commanded, and the woman limped toward him. Her leg was still healing, and her wrist was wrapped heavily, but if anything, it seemed to make her even more fierce. She returned to the castle they operated out of nearly foaming at the mouth, and proceeded to destroy a whole side area of the forest behind the castle.

They walked to a side room, where they entered. And there, strapped up to a chair, gazing blankly at a side wall, was Severus Snape.

"I send you to do something simple. Rid the world of a young boy, and you fail. And return to me, useless." Voldemort paused, gazing at the man in front of him. How the mighty had fallen, from standing tall and intimidating, to sitting in a side room, unable to move, and drooling on himself. Extensive overexposure to Legimency would do that that anyone. "Can kill the _Great Albus Dumbledore_, but can't put down Potter. I'm _ashamed_ of you, Severus." He conjured a regal throne and sat down, directly in front of Snape, and then he took a seat, Bellatrix moving to sit on the arm, resting her leg.

"Don't bother speaking, Severus, there's no need. All I need from you, are your screams. Oh how Bella enjoys them, they always make her feel better." And with that, Voldemort tilted Severus' head back, and began to, once again, ram his mental probe deep into the latter's mind.

It had begun as Voldemort simply needing to see the memory of what had transpired. After the self-styled Dark Lord had obtained that memory, he looked again. And again.

And for the next 6 hours, repeatedly.

Snape's mental shielding crumbled under the pressure. After half an hour, he was sweating. After an hour, he had a fever. Within 2, his nose was bleeding, and within 3, so were his ears.

By the time Voldemort stopped, upon the return of his followers from Diagon Alley, the man's eyes were glazed over, his hair had begun to loosen to the point that any pressure on his head would rip tufts out, and all he could manage for speech was a long string of mutterings.

The original Severus Snape was still somewhere, trapped in his own mind. But the focus on that single memory had been so intense, and the burden of the aggressiveness of Voldemort's attacks was so great, that the man who was once considered a prodigy in Occulmency, had been locked and lost inside his own mind. Voldemort was sure of it, he could feel Severus while he was in there, but saw no reason to assist the man in returning to his own mind.

---

Voldemort removed himself after seeing the memory once more. Something was wrong. There was…something drastically wrong with the memory, and no matter how many times he looked at it, nothing seemed to reveal the underlying issue.

The mental tampering had been successful. Because Voldemort couldn't get back into Potter's head directly, he had resorted to more...indirect ways of influence. He could, at times, heighten the boy's emotions to drastic levels, but at great strain to himself. His plan had been, to cause Potter such grief and pain, that the boy would end his own life. And he had succeeded. Or so he thought.

But some time during his rest period after doing this, he had become aware of a presence. Potter was still alive. He dispatched Severus immediately, and then…

The boy had been found in a pool of his own blood, large enough to have been the majority of the blood in his body. And yet, he lay there, breathing, when Severus had arrived. Voldemort seethed as he left the room, Bellatrix at his heels, as he contemplated what he was being forced to admit to himself.

Potter survived what should have been certain death.

Again.

Potter had defied death, and Voldemort himself, once more. He laid into torturing and abusing MacNair's dead body as a means to vent his anger.

The body landed somewhere in the next town, nothing left on it but the bones of the skeleton, and charred remains of flesh.

The man's war-axe landed right next to him, some moments later. Skewering the police officer who had been walking by, having stopped to examine the dead body that had fallen from the heavens.

---


	7. Death

There are few things in Human history that transcend geography, time, race, religion, and revolution.

Recognition of death is easily one of them.

Religious belief of life after death, and the ways of burial and embalming, such as the ancient Egyptians and the huge burial lands come to be known as pyramids millennia later.

Geographic differences, ranging from setting the dead out to sea, cremating them, or digging them deep into the ground.

But everything remains. Every culture has a way of recognizing that death is a present, and that something must be done to, and with, the dead.

But sometimes, there is too much death for even those aware of its inevitability, to be able to cope with easily. When there just isn't enough space in the crematorium. When there isn't enough wood for the boats to set the dead out into the ocean for their final journey. When there isn't enough land for burial plots.

When the dead must litter the streets. And everyone must become aware of the imminence of their demise,

Prepared or not.

---

Luna had come to realize, as she walked with Harry across London, that his stride was abnormally long for someone of his height. Long, but purposeful. He had come into some accidental information on the location of Death Eaters, and something in his eyes had…shifted.

They turned onto a road labeled as "Grimmauld Place", and Harry came to a dead stop. Obscuring their path a distance down the road, was a literal road block of Death Eaters.

The cloaked figures had yet to see them, but that had a lot more to do with the horde having something else to focus on, rather than any level of stealth on the pair's part. No, there, in the middle of the street, the Death Eater who appeared to be in charge was shouting out to the street, as another Death Eater to the figure's side held a woman down on her knees, his wand pressed to her temple.

"We know you are in there, and it would be advisable that you all come out. We have set Muggle-Repelling wards at both ends of this street, no one without magic will be entering, or leaving.

"Unless you reveal yourselves, we will kill every magic-lacking swine on this street, before we move to the next street over."

Luna had no idea what was going on, but it only took a partial glance at Harry to tell her that he knew more about what was happening than she did, and he liked it a good deal less than she, which was saying something. His hands were tightening around the wands in them, and he had tensed up as he began inching his way forward toward the large group of Death Eaters.

Luna put her hand on his forearm, but it was less of a restraining touch, and more of one to alert him to the fact that she was there. He turned and looked at her expressionlessly, however, the pause seemed just enough to knock him out of whatever mindset he was in that was leading him to charge into a large group of Death Eaters, with nothing but the two wands he held, and the hope of getting out alive.

He allowed her to lead him just a bit back off of the street and around the corner, where they were able to stop and think for a moment. There were something like fifteen to twenty Death Eaters there in the middle of the street, and under the assumption that every house on the street had at least one person in it, then there was the possibility of over 30 people being dragged out in the middle fo the street and killed. The odds didn't look good for Luna and Harry, the former realized, and it didn't help that time was definitely not on their side either.

"I have an idea. But I need your help." Luna nodded as Harry's voice washed over her, even as he stood with a faraway look in his eye, peering down the street toward the scene they had just come on.

"Anything."

"I need you to make some of those small statues you created back in Diagon. We will need quite a few of them," Even as he spoke, Luna had begun casting, and soon, there were quite a few small, human-shaped statues, sitting on the ground in front of them. Harry turned away from her, and she couldn't make out what he was saying as he finished his sentence, but she wouldn't need to. He began levitating the statues out into the street, and setting them down. He made rows of them, spacing them quite far apart, given their minute size. The next thing he said when he turned back to her, made everything make sense.

"I need you to enlarge them. That group of morons is much too focused in their attempts at terrorism to notice anything going on here, so it should be enough time. Make them roughly human sized, if possible, please."

"Harry, their construction is very hollow, even in their small forms. If you enlarge them, they'll look solid, but won't be anywhere near it. A slight amount of force, and they'd fall right over, never-mind their intended purpose of exploding and dissipating any magic used on them. They won't stand up to any spell cast on them, Killing Curse or Tickling Charm."

"They won't have to be."

"But I don't understand, why not just make them yourself, your constructs tend to be completely solid, and reflect at least moderate spells…" Luna trailed off as Harry looked at her in such a way that she immediately complied. Harry began walking out slowly as soon as the first row of statues were enlarged, and when Luna was completely finished, he was in the middle of the group, toward the far side from her, hidden from clear view by the large figures she had created.

Luna turned to look back at the Death Eaters to find that they were watching as a woman and a large bald man made their way out of seemingly nowhere, their wands trained forward in preparation of what might come of the stand-off.

Both groups however, were forced to cease their glaring contest as Harry's voice echoed out quite loudly down the street. "So Malfoy, taken to petty attacks on the innocent and defenseless? Now I know where your spawn gets it from."

"Potter! Where are you, show yourself!" The man who appeared to be Lucius Malfoy shouted, causing all the rest of the Death Eaters who were with him to turn to the direction he faced, as they all looked down the street toward where Harry and his group of statues were.

In the waning light of the evening, it looked as if Harry had arrived with a large group of backup, when in fact he was standing in the middle of the street with the only thing protecting him being a large group of man-shaped, hard-shelled, magical balloons. Spell fire rang out, and the distraction was all that was needed. The large bald man began firing spells, dropping Death Eaters left and right, as did the woman to his side, both moving in opposite directions and taking out anyone they could.

The discharge from the large statues being attacked and subsequently exploding in showers of magically created sparks was a large distraction, and Harry ran to the side and dove over a hedge, before pointing his wand out from under the bush, and firing severing charms, one after the other, as he moved the wand he fired with to the side every fire, effectively sending a wide blast of magic that served to cut 4 Death Eaters off at the ankles, leaving the landing on their backs, while their feet remained upright on the pavement.

This took quite a few of the Death Eaters out of the fight, however, it alerted the ones still standing to Harry's presence. This served a double purpose, as it not only drew fire onto him, but also drew attention away from the two apparent allies who had appeared from nowhere, the bald man and the woman who had arrived with him.

Harry noticed this, and instead of staying down under the cover of the hedge and possibly losing the cloaked minions' aggression, he jumped up and ran across the lawn, allow them to take shots toward his location to stay distracted. As he ran, he used his natural running movements of pumping his arms to assist him, as he would summon one of the small terracotta pots in the lawn as one arm went back, and banish it when his arm would move forward, sending it careening toward the Death Eaters, and even as one would fly forward, another would be picked up, as he showed surprising dexterity by using both wands for the spellwork.

The pots intercepted some spells, but the Death Eaters remaining weren't in the fight still after the opening volley because they were stupid, and soon they began aiming their spells, instead of at Harry, but where they suspected him to run, after watching one too many hexes slam right into pots, only to blow them up in a cloud of dust, obscuring their view for moments. Harry used this adjustment by his enemies to make some of his own, as, after every banishing of a pot, he would follow it up with cutting curse, disguised behind the pot. So even as the Death Eaters would send their own spells to destroy the pot, the cutting curse would cut right through the dust-storm created, and several Death Eaters met deep slices to the face or upper body as a result of thinking it better to banish or destroy the incoming objects, instead of dodging them.

Harry dispatched one Death Eater by banishing the pot, only to levitate it right before a spell was to hit it, just to banish it again into the face of a completely different Death Eater, shattering the pot into his mask, causing the shards of both to cut into the face of the man. Luna flinched at this as she could make out the blood from where she was, but she also saw that doing so had caused Harry to falter, and the return-fire was getting much too close to his running form, so Luna chose then to dive out from her cover.

She knew she didn't have the raw power to put too many Death Eaters down, and still be able to take the fire should they all turn to pursue her, so instead she opted to support Harry, mainly by means of distraction. Running forward, she targeted her wand at a street lamp nearest the Death Eaters. First she fired a bludgeoning hex, which slammed into the thick glass casing covering the bulb, and with the combination of the blunt trauma, as well as the magical interference, this led to a shower of glass and sparks showering down on the Death Eaters. This caused them to move forward from where they had been, but in doing so, they didn't keep their eyes on the lamp, too intent on watching Harry.

This led them right into Luna's next course of action, which was to, taking a page from Harry's book, sever the base of said lamp. Three Death Eaters fell prey to a large post of metal and wiring falling right down on them. The ones nearby turned to look to their fallen comrades, leading to Harry nailing two in the back of the heads with flower pots, and the large bald man crushing one's face in with a harsh bone-crushing curse to the mandible.

The man identified as Lucius Malfoy chose that time to Apparate himself out, along with what was left of his forces. He did so without a second to spare, as Harry's cutting curse made a gouge in the pavement where the man had been milliseconds after he disappeared. But it seemed he didn't make it as well as he could have, as there was a spattering of blood on the ground parallel to the gouge, as well as something the man didn't intend to leave behind.

The woman stared down at it, her hair flashing from the dark color it had been when she appeared, to a bright, almost day-glow pink. "Is that a…"

"A bit sad if you think about it. Lucius Malfoy, Apparating for decades now, and managed to splinch himself." The large bald man stated, before bending down and prodding the offending item with the tip of his wand. "Guess all those years of sticking it up to people, this was just begging to happen."

"Exactly how **does** one go about splinching their nose off?" The now pink-haired woman questions rhetorically, but Harry saw fit to answer as he walked up somberly, brushing grass off of the front of his shirt.

"By being a complacent moron, too used to sitting around letting others do the work to do anything themselves." He paused to spit at the gouge his spell had created, before slowly dragging his eyes up to meet the pair before him. "Sound like anyone you know, Kingsley, Tonks?" He finished with his own rhetorical statement, and Luna could literally hear the underlying insult in his words, despite her knowing nothing about what it was about.

"Now Harry…"

"Don't 'now Harry' me, Auror Tonks. How is it that the headquarters is under attack, people are being murdered in the middle of the street, and you all have the nerve to only send two people out to defend it? If that's not a surefire way to prove what I just said is right, I don't know what is."

He turned and looked to one side of the street, as Luna arrived at his side. She brushed her shoulder with his gently, letting him know she was there, before shifting her body weight away from his to allow him a measure of space between them. However, she was a bit shocked when she felt his weight near her again, as he leaned toward her. But she heard his voice in her ear, and then before her eyes, a house seemed to just appear in view, and a lot made sense to her, even though it brought up more questions.

"Actually Harry…we are the only ones here." The man apparently named Kingsley, stated.

If anything, this seemed to have done a lot more harm than good. Harry began walking, not toward the newly revealed house, but away from it. Luna stayed close, before jogging ahead of him a bit and turning around, shuffling to walk backwards so she could not only see Harry, but see the people they were walking away from.

"Harry, where are you going?" Tonks asked.

"Away from you all." Was his only answer, but it was followed by the pattering of feet, the heavier sound moving away from them, and the lighter one moving towards them, as Tonks ran toward Harry and Luna, and Kingsley ran toward the house.

"Harry, stop." Tonks stated, and when he kept walking, she reached out and grabbed his arm. Harry's reaction and Tonks' counter exchange was very quick, and before Luna knew it, Tonks had Harry's forearm in her hand, and he was pointing his wand right under her chin, as she had her wand pointed at his face. "Harry, I'm a trained Auror. It wouldn't do you any good to begin some type of fight with me, just calm down and listen."

"You may be a trained Auror, Nymphadora," The woman flinched as if she had just been slapped, "And you joined this fight voluntarily. Good for you. I've been dragged into this war, involuntarily, since I was an infant. I'd love to be done and over with it. Funny thing about having survival be all you know for your whole existence, eventually, not only do you know nothing else, but you eventually get tired of it. But moreover, you get instinctively unafraid of the opposition.

"I'm not afraid to die, Tonks. Can you say the same? Know why I was able to kill half of those Death Eaters? Not hurt. Not stun. Not even maim. Kill. Know why? Because I don't fear anything they could do to me. And I don't fear anything you could do to me right now. But can you say the same? Can you say, right now, that you honestly believe that if you don't release me right this moment, I won't leave you bleeding out in the middle of the street?"

The chill that ran through Luna at that precise moment, had nothing to do with the slight dusk breeze that swept across them, but it was born of the fact that _**she**_ couldn't tell if Harry would behead the woman, or not. But what she did know was, the quicker she assisted in removing the woman holding onto Harry from the situation, the more likely she was to not have to find out. Removing her wand from its resting place behind her ear, Luna stepped closer to the both of them, before training it on the Auror. "Let him go, so none of us have to find out how serious he is."

Tonks did so, only as she released him did she become aware that he had his hand positioned in such a way that she hadn't noticed the other wand he held in it, but it had been trained on her arm the whole time. If he had simply said the words, he could have cast a severing charm that would have removed her hand from her body. She shivered as she stepped back, before looking to Harry. "Why, Harry? We're all on the same side, aren't we?"

As Harry went to reply, the sound of several people moving down the street toward them at a rapid pace drew their attention. Coming toward them was a group comprised of Kingsley, Mrs. Weasley, two people who could only be William and Charles Weasley and Remus Lupin. Harry looked away from the incoming group and right at Tonks. "Same side, Tonks? What would give you that idea? I'm out here fighting this war. You all are in there, sitting on your asses waiting for the war to come to you. I won't wait for it. I'm tired of walking over bodies in pursuit of those taking the fight to us. I will be bring the fight to them, and they can sort out their own dead in their own homes, on their own time."

Turning his back on them, he caught eyes with Luna for a moment, attempting to flash a brief smile of reassurance at her. It didn't work as well as she expected it was meant to, but she appreciated the attempt, but wasn't able to dwell on it, as he finished.

"Lucius Malfoy is to Voldemort, what you all are to me, at the moment. Dumbledore died, we all understand that, but this war doesn't end with him. You can't stand by because someone was killed, and let it get you killed. Voldemort may have started the first war with Dumbledore, but it ended with me. He may have started this second war, with Dumbledore on the other side; once more, but I assure you. This will all end with me, one way or another. Either help me, or stay out of the way. Ineptitude only get's people killed." As he said this, he pointed his wand to the side, at one of the many dead bodies on the street, this one was obviously one of the non-magical people dragged from their home to be killed to make a statement.

"How long were you two in there before you decided to come out and prevent those idiots from killing these people?" Their silence was all the answer he needed, as he tensed up. "People are dying outside, and you all sit inside, twiddling your thumbs, waiting for instructions. This is precisely what I mean." And with that, Harry began walking away, not looking back. Luna trotted up to catch up to him, walking somewhat sideways to keep her eyes on the group they had left, all standing there speechless. Something she did notice before they turned the corner and left the group out of their eyesight was, apparently Mrs. Weasley wasn't as speechless as she appeared to be, her lips moving as if shouting, as she pointed at her throat, but no sound came off.

Apparently someone had the idea to cast a silencing charm on the woman.

Luna revised her mental assessment that no one in that group possessed any good sense.

Her newly revised belief was, most of the group lacked any good sense at all, and someone in the group possessed some, but not nearly enough to be considered a contributing member of society.

She just hoped they all would find enough sense to either get their acts together and help, or stay out of the way.

---

Voldemort was of mixed emotions.

On the one hand, he had lost a good many men, and to hear Lucius attempt to give a recount of what had occurred, as blood poured down the front of his face from his missing nose, had been a truly trying exercise of his patience.

On the other hand, however, his test had been a success. It had taken much too much energy from himself, but he had been able to push Harry Potter's aggression to amazing proportions, and from what he had been able to make out, as well as the many bodies that had been returned to him, he could see that, when given the proper…_motivation_…the boy had deep potential for causing pain.

In that case, it was a worthwhile attack, and they had ascertained the location of that "Order's" headquarters. Making it a successful, although border-lining on Pyrrhic, victory.

However, the self-styled Dark Lord hadn't missed the fact that it had taken a lot more energy than he had thought it would. Which caused him to realize something. The boy's mind was developing a…tolerance to the mental manipulation. When Voldemort first entered, he seemed to find the boy's ability to feel depression nearly gone, as he seemed to have replaced all guilt and depression with a feeling of determination and resignation.

And on the same note, as he had begun to withdraw his influence from Potter's mind the most recent time, he had found that the bloodlust and the sadism he had awakened in the boy, was being replaced by righteous fury and vengeance. His body began healing itself, and developing an immunity to further such manipulation. It was truly a remarkable thing to behold.

Voldemort realized that his trick wasn't going to last much longer, as the boy was adapting much too quickly for his own good. Something was going on, and the Dark Lord previously known as Tom Marvolo Riddle, didn't like it one bit.

As he settled in to another ransacking session of Lucius' mind to view the memory of the dark-haired boy besting him, Voldemort found one positive. Even in his screams, at least now, with his missing facial appendage, Lucius no longer sounded quite so…_nasal._

---

Remus Lupin sat quietly in a chair in the front room of the now Interim Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, more commonly known as the Staff Lounge of Hogwarts.

Fenrir Greyback had infiltrated the previous Headquarters with little more than brute strength.

The Death Eaters had forced them to leave the safety of their own hiding place, by using means of terror. And it had taken Harry Potter arriving through what appeared to be sheer serendipity, for them to survive it.

Harry…

Fenrir had arrived, not for help from the Order. Not to kill anyone there, either. His words had been simple. Stay out of his way, if any of the Order's people wished to survive, because the fight against Voldemort had become personal to him.

And just that day, it was as if the same sentiment, echoed from Harry, albeit in different words.

Reflecting, Remus realized, based on Tonks' and Kingsley's reports of the battle, Harry had done a vast more work than either of the two trained Aurors. And they were getting reports of Death Eaters being stalked down and hunted, and Remus knew it could only be Fenrir.

The war was passing by the little group of like-minded individuals following the guidance of Albus Dumbledore. It had become a playground for those with personal vendettas to settle, and they didn't let silly things such as awaiting orders, or bureaucratic decrees prevent them from being in the fight, stop them.

Remus realized, he was in deep need of remembering what made the war personal to him.

Because if he didn't, the war would pass him by, and he would have missed his chance to gain his revenge for his fallen friends. Or the chance to fall in battle himself, and join them on the other side.

---


	8. Touch

Most humans have the natural instinct to comfort those in turmoil.

A stranger in a strange land, wandering the street, may pass a crying woman, and wish to give her comfort, despite knowing nothing about her or her situation.

Languages bring people together, but also create barriers between them. Barriers that can protect from pain and hurt, but also barriers that deny kind words and helping hands.

But no matter what, one thing escapes those barriers.

Touch.

The simple act of reaching out and placing a consoling hand, or wrapping another in an embrace can defy the barriers of words.

And even more, at times, can provide so much more than could possibly be verbalized.

---

Alecto Carrow was a narcissistic woman.

She held no delusions on her beauty, she knew that she was no Narcissa Malfoy, nonetheless Bellatrix Lestrange, who had once been a beautiful woman in her own right.

No, Alecto knew she wasn't of that persuasion, but still found herself deeply attracted to the image she observed as she looked in the mirror. Not because of some extreme amount of beauty, but simply because it was her, and she loved herself.

This fact had led to a development many years past that had not only confused and disgusted her, but it had also caused her to wonder why she hadn't thought of it sooner.

Amycus Carrow had very little in the way of possessions, and he had grown up with even less. When Alecto had gone to him that night, she had known he would have been willing to do any, and every, thing she asked of him.

She had played on that fact from the beginning.

Alecto's narcissism had led her to doing something that the inbreeding masses of Purebloods even looked down on.

Blatant Incest.

She had fallen so in love with herself, that she had ended up finding herself bedding the entity that reminded her most of herself.

She sighed as she lowered her head to meet the table of the booth she sat in. She was sitting, awaiting her brother's arrival.

---

Fenrir Greyback sat quietly with Devlon in the pub, seated in a dark corner, both silent and inconspicuous in the seedy location. It had confused the pack leader at first, finding the repulsive woman in an establishment that wasn't owned or run by magical people. In some ways, it seemed outside of the nature of those that followed the hypocrit calling himself Lord Voldemort.

Fenrir became aware of something after some time, and Devlon noticed it at the same moment, as they had both suddenly looked each other in the eye. They could smell the woman's disgusting excitement, but they could also smell…

Their suspicions were confirmed before they could even voice them to each other, as Amycus entered the pub, looking nervous and shaking slightly. Alecto was on her feet in moments, and had locked eyes with him, before walking toward the back stairs, up to the rooms above the pub. Amycus followed demurely, head down, much like an obedient child following a parent after a stern look.

The werewolves sat quietly as they disappeared, and when their noses picked up the smells of the Carrows changing, they stood and crept up the staircase.

The inhabitants of the top floor of the pub hadn't even raised any eyebrows as the screams funneled down the stairway. A joke was made by a drinker at the bar about the level of noise that was apparently coming from the two, as he reflected on a day when he too had made a woman scream like that. Faint, drunken laughter echoed, but no one bothered to say anything beyond that.

Fenrir and Devlon had descended from the second floor room they had barged into by jumping from the back window, leaving the door locked. As such, it wasn't until three days later, that the mangled, mauled, and utterly ruined bodies of Alecto and Amycus Carrow were found.

---

Luna Lovegood observed Harry Potter, the latter once more sitting quietly in their confiscated hotel room.

She could literally feel the waves of conflicting emotions in him, just by being in the same room as him. Every few seconds his posture would change, his eyes would shift, and he would tense and relax, over and over again.

Luna had no misgivings about understanding the person before her, or the belief that she would gain such an ability any time soon. But what she did know was that he was someone in need of another person's presence.

She had felt that way many times at Hogwarts, and felt the coldness that not having such a comfort left behind. It hadn't been until Harry befriended her, that she had been able to break out of that prison of her own despair, and she felt she owed him the same regard, if nothing more than to begin to make up for the gift he gave her when they spoke what seemed like ages before.

She stepped toward him until she was standing right next to his sitting form, her knee just brushing his. Her hand reached out, and moved toward his head, as if to run it through his hair, before she hesitated for a moment and; thinking better of it, began to pull her hand back.

Harry moved from sitting hunched over with his face in his hands, to sitting back against the large, overstuffed chair with his eyes closed and his body slightly slouched. Luna thought that odd, because in his movement, he had literally moved his head against her hand right before it was far enough from him. He knew she was there, she had no doubt of that, but that was twice that day that he had moved in to her touch, when she had intended to give him space to not make him uncomfortable.

She maneuvered herself to sit on the arm of the chair he was sitting on, but made it a point to not touch him unless he initiated it. One moment they were both just gazing out of the window before them, watching the world outside, and the next, Luna found herself on her back, with Harry's mouth seals over hers, his hands both pinning her to the floor, and holding her to him.

Her slight sound of shock blurred into a sound of disapproval and confusion, but the sounds she made effectively fell on deaf ears, even as they changed from disapproval and uncomforted, to something entirely different.

---

Voldemort had realized something during the downtime after his last mental attack on Harry. He had, to date, heightened the boy's depression and his anger, both feelings seen as something for moderation, excess clearly negative. He had seen the memory of Harry travelling with a female, and also knew that, with the aforementioned Potter's age being a factor as well, the next feeling he intended to tamper with, would be an easy target.

The moment the man once known as Tom Riddle was capable of the necessary effort to break into Harry's mind, he immediately began work on spiking the latter's feeling of lust and desire. The self-styled Dark Lord found it much harder than he had initially expected.

The byproduct of this action, left him calling for Bellatrix to assist him in making it to his personal chambers, and attempting to convince her to stay there with him.

---

Harry made it out of the haze of lust, desire and borderline insanity he had found himself in, to realize Luna was laying on top of him, her forehead pressed against his, and her eyes lined up directly with his.

When he blinked away the fog from his eyes, he was met with her bright blue eyes gazing at him, the edges around them a red showing she had been recently distressed and potentially crying. And in that moment, everything came crashing back into his mind, and his eyes widened in such a way that it would have been comical, if not for the seriousness of the situation.

He tried to get up, but Luna held him down, keeping her eyes locked on his and her forehead pressed against his own. He continued to fight against her, panicked and appalled at what his mind was telling him had just occurred, but Luna fought tooth and nail to keep him down, his back to the carpet, and her forehead to his. Eventually, his movements slowed and came to a stop as he felt warm liquid on his face, and he stared up to see Luna gazing down at him, still completely silent, her tears splashing onto his cheeks, and due to his ceased movement, some even fell into his eyes.

And they laid that way, as she continued to hold him there, eyes locked, for an undetermined amount of time.

"Luna…"

"No."

"No, look, I'm…"

"No." Harry stared up at her as the single word left her mouth again, confused entirely. But there was an acceptance in her eyes that wiped the confusion away, and replaced it immediately with anger. But before he could open his mouth to release it, she had spoken again, her voice light, simple, and quiet, but would easily have drowned out any protestation he would have made. "Whatever it was, you needed it. The world needs you, which means I need you. So if there's something you needed of me, I am obliged to give it."

"Whatever that was, I…I won't let it happen again, Luna."

"But I will." Her simple response to his words shocked him more than anything else. It was as if she was stating a well known fact of the universe, like there was no mystery to it, and that any denial of it had no basis whatsoever. "Now, I think it best we get up from the floor. I admire your spontaneity, but I do request that all subsequent rendezvous of such nature not take place on such a hard surface." Her smile unnerved him more than her acceptance, because he knew that whatever had just occurred, that had just come over him, had caused him to do something very wrong to her. And it felt wrong for her to be reaching out to help him up off the ground.

But he couldn't shake the fact that it felt even more wrong to him to be missing her touch so badly.

---

What had begun as one confiscated room in a hotel, had somehow begun to spread, as the days of the week passed. The room next to them would be vacated and go through check-out, and it would be removed from accessibility to all but Harry and Luna through the latter's spell work, and the former's leadership. By the time the sun reached its highest point on Saturday, the entire floor was layered under heavy charm work, and Luna was off _obliviating _staff members of their memory of the rooms altogether.

Harry for his part, was staring at the wall in front of him, rattling off _Diffindo_ as fast as his mouth would allow him to. Sometimes his tongue wouldn't be able to keep up, and he would stumble over the word and pronounce it incorrectly. An hour into his practice, that had caught him up, and the spells had ceased to appear when he mispronounced. Four hours later, they continued as if he had said it perfectly. By six hours in, he had given up on saying _Diffindo_ at all unless the spell wasn't produced when he let the magic free.

He had yet to be able to make it completely non-verbal continuously. Sometimes a whisper of "Diffy" would do. Other times, he had been able to completely forego a word, and simply use a sound. During the last 15 minutes, he had begun toying with using completely different sounds entirely. He was at the point that he was able to get the cutting curse to fire even when he spoke the incantation for the stunning spell. It had taken him a few thousand _Diffindo_s over those six hours, and 3 other walls, to get a good understanding of how the magic felt.

And a firm grasp on the fact that the magic that produced the near physical incarnation of a sweeping blade; or when directed as such, the magic that created a pinpoint-thin puncture, felt much different than the magic of the other spells he had allowed himself to become completely enamored with. And that meant that, as long as he had the feeling of that magic in him, the words would steadily become tertiary.

---

By the time Luna came back some time later, Harry had removed 4 walls, and was removing a fifth through use of summoning and banishing spells. He would send a heavy block of wood from a previous wall through the wall he was demolishing, just to summon it back, just to the side, making the hole larger, steadily.

Luna was shocked at the work Harry had done, and went behind him, cleaning up the remnants of the destroyed walls, and generally neatening and tidying up everything he had done.

And they did that in relatively companionable silence for another two hours. The sun had long since set by the time they were done, and every room on the side of the hallway where their initially procured room was, had been effectively demolished, and turned into one very large open space.

Harry had gotten into the bed on the far side of the long expanse they have cleared for the night, his wand on the bedside table, and his glasses perched above them. He had been quiet and breathing slowly for roughly half an hour when the lights from further down the room clicked off. Luna had been reading for about an hour when he had decided to go to sleep, and seemed to have now decided that she was finished with the book, and in some ways, he was glad for it, as the light had been disturbing him somewhat, leading to him hiding under the protective cover of his comforter.

He had just poked his head out from under his covers when he came face to face with Luna and her bright eyes again. He sat there quietly with their gazes locked for an indefinable amount of time before she took the blanket from his hand and moved it back, before pushing his body back on the bed. She climbed into the bed in front of him, and laid down at his side, rolling over and locking eyes with his again.

No words were spoken that night from then on, even though they both stayed awake for some hours, and the physical touch was nothing more than the slightest of unintentional bumping.

---

Hermione Granger stood silently, gazing intently at the golden liquid in the vial in front of her. She had finally found it, after quite some time spent searching around, and finding herself in the seediest of locations, she had happened upon someone willing to deal the potion. She here she stood in front of the man, holding the vial before her, with him looking on grinning openly at her.

"Ready to purchase, girly?"

Hermione looked as if she was considering it, before firing a Stunning spell from her wand at the man. She had rationalized that anyone selling this potion in the way that he had, was not using the money they obtained from it for anything positive, and as such, it was well within her rights as a moral person to relieve them of a source of income that would surely only go toward nefarious means.

What she hadn't bet on was the dealer also being a user, as her stunning spell found a way to just miss the man, as he had chosen just then to bend down and pick up a Knut from the ground. He looked up in shock at her, and she echoed that shocked look back at him, before she took off running, him following behind her. And while she had to dodge through the people walking, he seemed to simply have holes in the crowd open up for him, often by her own barging through allowing a more clear path for her pursuer.

He was gaining on her fast, and Hermione knew that she had no chance to beat his luck through brute force and casting on him in hopes of it working. So instead, she dodged into the first shop with an open door that she could find, slammed the door shut, and magically sealed it.

Turning around, she stared blankly at the apothecary she had somehow wandered into, not for the first time wondering if the Luck Potion she held actually gave luck-by-association, giving good fortune just by holding the vial.

---

When the man looking for his stolen potion finally made it into the room several moments later, having had to take care not to blast the door down, lest he disrupt some ingredients and cause a massive explosion, he looked through the store, searching for the girl who had run away from him. A red haired woman wandered from the store past him, and he smiled gently and cordially at her before continuing his search for several more minutes before giving up. The girl had gotten away.

Sighing, undercover Auror Bird headed back to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, grumbling to himself. He had been out, posing as a Restricted Potions dealer for some time, in hopes of catching the purchasers, and he had finally come upon a buyer who wasn't wary of his clean and well maintained appearance. And after a week of no buys, he happened upon one, just to find himself robbed of the potion.

But the deep frown left Bird's face quickly, as he remembered that there a saving grace to it all, a Ministry-created contingency plan for just such a situation.

The fact that, thanks that the Ministry's Potion Department had had the good sense to add a film to the vial's mouth that would cause an increased necessity for the potion to the drinker. It ensured that, despite the girl getting away, it wouldn't be too long after she used what she did get, that her body would be wanting, needing, more.

He smiled to himself, knowing that the wheels had begun turning for the thief's capture as soon as the girl had touched the vial, in all actuality. Peeling his gloves off, and filing it all away as sowing the seeds for the girl's capture, Auror Bird walked out of the Apothecary, hands shoved in his pockets and a whistled tune at his lips.

---

Hermione Granger walked quickly away from the apothecary, blowing a strand of her now red hair out of her face as she allowed the vial that the hair-coloring potion had been housed in to fall from her fingertips while she rounded a far corner.

She hadn't liked how she had obtained it, but she had, and she refused to let herself feel bad about what needed to be done to do so. She needed it to be able to get to Harry, to get back on his good side, and to be able to help him. As far as she was concerned, the world's continued existence was all based on Harry, and Hermione felt no arrogance in her belief that Harry needed her assistance, or would, at some point. So, she rationalized it all to herself, if one stolen potion could save the world, who was she to not be willing to make that moral sacrifice?

She clutched the vial gently in her hand, smiling brightly, she tossed her hair to the side and over her shoulder, before walking confidently and happily into Muggle London, away from any wizard or witch who might have noticed her, and hopefully back into Harry's good graces.

"Running off without me, _honestly_, what was that boy thinking?" She intoned to herself, "Well, won't be long before everything is as it should be."

---


	9. Thought

Humans have long held two conflicting beliefs.

Some believe in free will, the ability to determine one's own actions and in doing so, control one's life. The belief that they are the master of their own destiny, and their lives are their own to make the most of. There is no fate, because every man's action is his own.

Others believe in fate. Predetermined actions that people have no control over, and are simply left acting out a prewritten play on the stage of life, with no ability to alter the course of action they are made to take. There is no free will, because no man's choices are his own.

Many humans do not realize, free will and fate are not as exclusive of each other as they like to believe. Both groups are right, and both are wrong.

Fate is the final destination.

Free will is how much you choose to progress towards it.

But questions are left. What if one's fate is actually determined by their choices, and not their choices by their fate? What should happen if the destiny one resigns to; and that path they walk, only becomes fate due to their chosen actions?

And what if the information that causes the belief of a predetermined fate, is a lie?

--

Luna didn't ask.

It was a blessing in and of itself, for both Harry's sake as well as her own.

Things Luna Lovegood wondered about, she searched out the answers for. If they required her to ask something, then she was of the belief that it was therefore not yet meant for her to know, and she waited. Of all the things Luna wasn't, she _was_ patient.

And because she didn't ask, Harry never had to be dishonest to her. He had yet to, and was firmly of the belief that he wouldn't even have to, as long as she stayed who she was. Because there were things he wouldn't tell her. He was capable of explaining things to her; Luna was quite intelligent, so he was sure she would understand anything 

he said. But he had no intention of telling her, or anyone for that matter, some things. Which is why Harry was glad for Luna Lovegood.

Luna didn't ask.

So Harry didn't lie.

--

Albus Dumbledore had been an old man. No one in the Wizarding world deluded themselves with the belief that that wasn't the case. A side effect of living for well over a century, was the accumulation of quite a vast amount of physical possessions.

The downside to that fact was, along with growing both in age and possessions, Albus Dumbledore, near his later days, also grew in distrust of those around him to keep secrets he told. The secrets of his old age were regarded the man not only as his property, but his burden to bear as long as he breathed.

But he didn't delude himself into believing that when he passed, what he called his personal "curse" would simply fade with him. And that curse was knowledge, knowledge of many things. And he would be doing a disservice to the world if he allowed knowledge to be lost. And in order to spare the world, he had to inconvenience a select few.

Which was why there was a large group of owls all leaving the Hogwarts ground carrying a variety of items, several headed to different directions. Knowledge had been Albus Dumbledore's curse, his knowledge of his impending death fueled everything he did his last week of existence, and one of those missions had been a time-delayed mass owl delivery, scheduled to be released after a certain amount of time from his demise.

His last hopes as far as those had been, was the hope that someone who received the information he gave, would take the weight of his previously held curse, and help Harry. And in doing so, help the world.

--

Severus Snape was many things, but he was not a man to sit idly by and waste his time. Even in his potion making, he had the tendency to have several going at once, so he had something going on at all times.

His time trapped within his own mind was no different.

Biding time and storing mental energy was a very foreign practice to him, and using that energy to attempt to erect some kind of mental shielding, or even using some mental energy to try and get out of his personal prison, refused to work for him. Either he would run out of energy while building his shield and therefore have it crumble, or he would become exhausted and fall unconscious while trying to escape from his mind, and end up back where he started upon awakening.

He soon realized that what he was trying, wasn't going to work.

His time to strike arose when he heard a voice he recognized quite well approaching him down the corridor. His cell door was slung open in a loud and overstated manner, and there in the doorway, stood Bellatrix.

"Good day, Half-Blood." She spat this, but on the same note, it seemed to come out almost teasingly. She walked around the edges of his sight radius, almost prancing around just too far from where he could see her. "My master has been teaching me many things, especially regaling how you had once been in the position I currently am." She stepped directly in front of him so he could see her, and leaned down as if talking to a small child. "You were his favorite once. But apparently, somehow, you ruined that, didn't you."

She stood and walked away from him, swaying her hips intent on drawing his eyes. But he was much beyond the weak draw of her slight hips in the all-concealing robes, and as such, didn't bother to turn his eyes to them.

"Something else he has been teaching me, is that little mind trick that got you stuck in this position. I'm interested in seeing for myself, what it is that you did that has made him treat your mind like a four-Knut whore. Is that alright with you, Severus my dear?" She paused as if suspecting an answer, which was impossible for Snape to give, so he didn't bother attempting to, as it would simply make him drool on his robes and make a groaning sound. And even in his destroyed state, Severus Snape refused to be that undignified.

It wasn't until Bellatrix had leaned forward, resting her hands on the cauterized wounds across the man's thighs, and begun searching for eye contact with him, that Severus was struck by inspiration.



Using all of the physical energy he had, he lifted his head, made eye contact, and immediately sent a weak push against her mind with the energy he had. Because of his weakness, he didn't have nearly the amount of strength required to ransack the woman's mind in much the way Voldemort had done to him. So he did the next best thing.

His push caused her to immediately attempt to expel him from her mind. And in doing so, she over-pursued, and he used this to drag her into his mind, and trap her there. Whereas, it took quite a bit of energy to push into someone else's mind, it took vastly less to trap someone else in your own once pulled there out of their own control.

And so that was how Voldemort found them. Snape in his usual vegetative state, and Bellatrix slumped over, he head in the man's lap, in quite the similar state, her body twitching every so often.

His scream of rage echoed throughout the room and down the corridor Bellatrix had skipped down happily not long before.

--

Ronald Weasley found himself very unhappily working his summer away in the backroom of his brothers' store, attempting to repair minimal collateral spell damage by hand, and placing fallen products back on the shelves in the eclectic order his identical brothers favored.

And he hated every moment of it.

He had been regaled with the tales of Harry Potter saving people in the Alley from the dangerous Bellatrix Lestrange and her contingent of Death Eaters, and he had been struck by an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. On the one hand, his friends had lived and he was deeply relieved by that. He knew every time they went into a fight, he expected them not to come out of it alive and intact, and he was very thankful that the luck had stayed.

But on the other side, it was another widely publicized event in the war, and something that his friends had been party to, that he had missed out on by a short amount of time. He supposed in some way, he had achieved a level of safety they didn't have, and he had to take the good with the bad, the bad in his eyes being missing out on being seen as a true fighter in the war, as a hero. But the good being, he had missed any possibility 

of death on the same Alleyway-turned-battlefield that he had also wished he could have made his stand on.

He wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't heartless. He had seen the numbers released of people that were killed in the Alley before the battle turned in such a way that spellfire was redirected from those fleeing, toward Harry.

He knew it was Harry. Not Luna, not Hermione, Harry. As much as he hated how everything seemed to always be focused on Harry, he knew that it wasn't _just_ the good. Ronald Weasley didn't delude himself to that extent in the least. Harry was the person most likely to have the worst shit in life happen to him, and often times, in public. It was one of the only things Ron didn't envy the other boy over.

He waged a war within his own mind over his natural instincts of jealousy toward Harry, and his rational mind saying he shouldn't envy Harry…he should pity him. Fate routinely seemed to keep Harry in extremes. When the universe liked him, it loved him. When it didn't like him so much, it hated him.

And despite it all, Ron couldn't stop a part of his mind from being just a little bit jealous. He had wished he had been able to be there for the fight. Make the front page. Cause his mother to cry tears of both happiness and worry upon seeing the article. Have the pride people had when speaking of Harry, directed at him.

Ron sighed to himself and went back to stocking up the backroom, hoping Harry stayed safe, and out of the news, until Ron could get in contact with him to be by his side, and watch his back.

--


End file.
